Otaku Reflected
by Skysaber
Summary: A wish gone wrong, more villains than you can shake a stick at, everybody confused about who is supposed to be the anime, and meddlesome faeries. How can you go wrong?
1. Chapter 1

Otaku Reflected

Episode One, Part One  
A Prelude to Chaos

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

To say that Oberon and Titania did not get along would be rather like saying that Belldandy tends to be polite or that planets tend to be fairly heavy. The two would infrequently reconcile, but then things tended to blow up before very long. Hera and Zeus, for example, were the very spirit of domestic bliss when compared to Oberon and Titania.

Oberon *did* tend to keep tabs on things, and was therefore interested when all the dimensional comings-and-goings of his latest scheme to obtain a mortal paramour failed to rouse his estranged wife from her Citadel. With Ravenshart out of the action, he had to use other spies, but that was something he had in number.

The report from Shadoweye was something that Oberon found *very* intriguing.

The faerie had been around for a very long time, but there were things far older than they were. One was a fellow named Puck who had briefly been within Oberon's service for the chance to sow a little mischief. This brief service had lasted about seven hundred mortal years, and had ended when Puck had decided that Oberon was more interested in causing chaos than mischief. To Puck, aka Robin Goodfellow, there was a considerable amount of difference between mischief and chaos.

Titania had spent some time with Puck recently, and apparently had learned of Alternate Universes from that mischievous being.

Up until this revelation, Oberon and Titania had played only with Three Worlds, though they knew of others. The Faerie Realm was their home, the Mortal Realm a lower energy world where inherent faerie abilities were great powers, Makai- a land of demons and dark beings (though they'd gotten rather placid of late and weren't nearly as much fun as they'd used to be).

Other mortal planes got Oberon to thinking, and he started looking at the possibilities therein. Magical energies got his attention, and he noted that his chosen paramour existed on one of those other planes. He cast his mind's eye on these other realities and found amusement.

Here, the one known as Ranma was a powerful mage, and married to a Asgardian!

Here, another version of Ranma walked worlds with ease and had powerful allies.

Here, in a universe with a faster time rate, yet another Ranma had married a girl named Akane Tendo and fathered a child named Ranko. Now it was the *daughter* who adventured (mainly because her home life was such a *hell* that just about any excuse to get away was welcomed) and crossed planar boundaries.

Oberon's gaze was stopped as a black cat crossed his path. "Puck."

"Nowadays it's Toltiir," acknowledged the currently feline Elder. "Don't go any further, old friend. Some of these realities have guardians, and many would not hesitate to strike you down."

Oberon considered as the image of the Elder faded. He had forces aplenty. He would concentrate on *his* Realm, for now, but sending a highly placed UnSeelie Lord in to stir things up (and possibly net him one of those more interesting Ranmas) seemed well within his current abilities.

Oberon smirked. Why, he might even start a collection.

OoOoO

In the local California park a young man in exercise shorts ran laps around the lake. It had been raining heavily lately, and he was splashed with mud all over his bare feet. Which he felt was all the better, as pulling feet out of sucking mud to retain a running pace was all that much more exercise.

It wasn't that he was all that fanatical, though he could be when required. It's just that he had an overpowering mind and an intense curiosity about the limits of his own body, and a sometimes desire to expand them. Something about the health of the body and of the mind being linked. He couldn't explain it, he just knew that it worked. If he kept his body satisfied, then his mind had more power.

However, it was a very peculiar desire for the age. And it drew some very unusual attention. Three fairies consulted in the bushes.

The first yawned, being newly awakened. "Huh? Wow." She tugged the sleeve of her sleeping sister. "Look, Flora. Look at that mortal."

The second faerie awoke as the third served both her sisters tea, being a much earlier riser. The second smacked her mouth a few times, sounding of morning breath. "What is it? Oh!" Her eyes snapped wide, sleep forgotten. "Yes, I see him, Fauna. Quite a specimen, isn't he? Reminds me of the old days, when we had a prince creeping behind every bush."

The first hmphed. "He's not a prince, at least he doesn't look like one anyway. It's so hard to tell since they gave up royal families. But anyway, look at the way he's moving."

The third abandoned her domestic task. "I say, isn't that combat practice?"

The first nodded. "On such a peaceful world too. We aren't due to need another hero until the present empires fall, and that's a little while away yet."

"It seems such a pity to let a good hero go to waste like that." The third sighed, going back to her chores, munching on a very large sandwich with all sorts of meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and such things piled between slabs of bread.

The young man, oblivious to this conversation, began running atop a rough wall made of logs. It was low and uneven, made up of trunks of many varied lengths, for children to climb over and practice balance. He ran across it, not without trouble though, having to cut his speed by quite a bit.

The second faerie sipped her tea ruthlessly, refusing to care. "Oh, what does it matter anyway? They all carry iron these days. It's not like we could do anything." She secretly sniffed. "It's been *ages* since we got a good transportation or shapeshift in. I've almost forgotten how to turn a man into a toad."

The first was gleaming. "Oh *no* he doesn't!" She sang. The other two peered over her shoulder and marveled.

"That's right!"

"Look at that. No shoes even, and he's heading toward a faerie circle!"

This was too good a chance to miss. The three swiftly consulted. "I vote we make a toad out of him."

"Waste of a good hero."

"Shall we have him bring down an evil overlord?"

"This world hasn't got anything else these days. It would just get replaced by another. Whoever heard of bureaucracy, anyway? Stuff and nonsense!"

"Whatever it is, we'd best do it fast! We won't get an opportunity like this again for decades!"

"Wish granting?"

"Old fashioned, but good. Just give him whatever's on his mind? We haven't time to approach him properly."

"Agreed." The other two chorused, not having the slightest qualm about letting anything happen so long as it was more interesting than making tea, waiting for a new era of dragons and things.

The youth was just finishing up his morning run, his body protesting beautifully. He was satisfied, thinking that it was nothing like Ranma's conditioning, but who could compete with anime?

That was when his foot crossed the circle of toadstools and sank into the mud. A flash of light and he vanished. A sparkling rainbow of energies rippled and faded over the toadstools, leaving the faerie circle unexpectedly empty.

"You really shouldn't have done that."

The three faeries whirled around from their chores to see a minuscule woman standing behind them, dressed in an elegant little white gown with faerie sprinkles glimmering all over. While the first three faeries were rather dumpy and a little plain, this new one was perfectly proportioned and indeed, if she were five feet taller and had hidden her wings, might pass for a very attractive mortal.

Which was one of her favorite pastimes.

"Mistress Titania!" Flora whispered, quickly executing a curtsy. "We were not expecting you, Your Majesty." The other two dipped into curtsies as well, each one showing varying degrees of astonishment and guilt.

"Who was that mortal?" Titania played with the tip of her pearl wand. "I can only say that the guardians of the dimensions he disrupted were not pleased."

The three faeries all looked guiltily to the ground, then to each other, fidgeting.

"Well?"

Titania did not need to raise her voice. Ever.

Merryweather, the third faerie, bobbed a curtsy and whispered something too low to be heard.

"What was that?" The Queen of the Fae demanded.

"Wedon'tknow."

"What?" Having to repeat herself was almost unheard of for the Queen of Faerie and she was actually becoming quite interested. It had been an appallingly dull few centuries and anything anyone was *this* anxious to hide had to be interesting.

"We don't know, Highness." Merryweather repeated, playing with her fingertips without looking up.

Titania blinked for several seconds. "You don't know." She repeated. "You granted a dimension spanning wish without even knowing the name of the mortal who was to receive it?"

That was daring. More daring than even *she'd* normally consider. Without knowing the recipient's name beforehand, a wish could not be undone if things didn't turn out the way you liked.

"Why, pray tell, did you do that?"

Flora gulped heavily. "Um, well... it'd been so long since we'd seen a hero, you see, and..." She broke off when she saw Titania smiling. Unless she was trying to charm someone, Titania did not have a nice smile. It was always pretty, unfailing polite, and unmistakably fiendish.

"Oh, really? A hero, you say? How interesting. Tell me more about him, and why you chose to send him across so many dimensions."

"We didn't know he would travel through the dimensions, Highness." Fauna pled, trying to better their predicament.

"How could you not?" Titania resumed playing with both tips of her wand, then froze as a thought struck her. She blinked again. Oh, my. Things *were* getting interesting weren't they? "Please do not tell me that you granted an OPEN wish?"

"As Your Majesty wishes." Flora bobbed a very relieved curtsy, thankful to have gotten out of that.

"Oh, my." Titania remained frozen in place, blinking in surprise. A wish to an unnamed mortal and *no one* involved knew the terms? This could be as interesting as the last war between the Seelie and Unseelie courts. She smiled again.

"We didn't *know* that he would wish to travel through the dimensions." Fauna pled. "Most mortals wish for gold, jewels or for something like that. How were we to know that he would decide to travel off somewhere?"

Titania felt her ancient, yet smoothly attractive, face nearly crack into a genuine smile. These three really had no idea what they'd done! Oh, it would cause all sorts of trouble but what interesting thing wouldn't? This was entertainment fit for *decades* if not centuries even if the mortal was boring! Just seeing the punishment decided upon by the thousand or more dimensional guardians who'd had their universes threatened.

The concept of what would be should the mortal prove interesting...

If the mortal was an interesting sort this could be a whole new sport that would stretch on for millennia at the very least. She would have to find Oberon and rub his nose in it.

Titania feigned a sigh. "The worst has happened." She lied as only a member of a royal court can, hiding her glee. Mischief occurred to her and she wondered if she could drag Puck in on an aspect or two on this. At the very least she could get the ball started.

She raised both her head and her wand.

"And because it is those of the Fae that caused it to occur, it is up to us to help solve it." ~Or make it worse.~ "There is much cleaning up to be done." ~Rather the opposite, of course.~ "From the reports of the dimensional guardians over a thousand different dimensions were disrupted because of the mortal's traveling Gateways."

"Wow, try saying THAT five times fast." Flora giggled. Somehow she knew that they weren't going to get punished for this, at least not by Titania.

"Saying what five times fast?" Merryweather asked distractedly, coming out of her funk.

"Different dimensions disrupted."

"That isn't all that hard a tongue twister." Fauna remarked, "And it doesn't contain any humor either, Flora. So I don't see why you're laughing. After all, it isn't as though you could interrupt a normal conversation with it. Those words don't occur very often."

"Only when you are very likely to be in trouble." Titania regained control of the conversation with an icy glance, having spent this time summoning her favorite scrying mirror, which she turned back to. "As I was saying, most of the disruptions were trivial. A bit of snow here or there where it was not supposed to be, a pool of water in a desert or a dry patch on the sea floor. Most of these are self-correcting. But I can tell of at least three dimensions that will have more long-term..." ~Results!~ "Ahem, problems."

"THREE?" All three faeries cried out, aghast.

Dimensional distortions occurred occasionally. Usually they could be taken care of by a trivial manipulation or by finding the right alien to invade and wipe out all trace of the affected civilization.

One couldn't have inaccurate time lines running about. Well, it happened all the time, actually. Just few people were allowed to be aware of it. Those sort of things were considered to be a privilege and it got messy if too many were allowed to get involved in them.

Messy suited Titania just perfectly right then.

She stroked the rim of her mirror. "First you must find this errant mortal. Then he must be returned. The Guardians of each gateway must be appeased that we are doing all we can."

"That would be a good tongue twister." Flora remarked.

"What is?" Merryweather asked.

"Gateway's Guardians."

"No it isn't." Fauna argued.

"Yes it is. Gateway's Guardians five times."

"No it isn't. A good tongue twister has to have at least five words that sound the same and start with the same letter."

"For some reason, I'm not surprised that this problem started because you three granted a wish." Titania murmured, expecting them not to hear, or at least to pretend to not have heard, which was more likely among the Fae.

From her assistant, whom she'd discretely contacted on the side, Titania had learned that despite the way they behaved, these three were some of the oldest and, in their own way, wisest faeries who lived in the vast Courts of Faerie.

And among the most innocent as well, strangely enough.

~All probably due to the fact that they'd never *attended* Court.~ The Queen groused inwardly to herself.

If it would have helped, she would have threatened and browbeat them at how dangerous and important their mistake was, except she knew that they already knew, and that this was their way of coping and helping to solve this problem.

~Several points against them all.~

And yet, here the Queen thought. If they could be but trusted to continue in the happy, bumbling way that had *started* this wonderful mess, things might become more interesting all on their own.

~Hmm, set them tasks and see what happens.~

"Ahem!" She went on. " I believe that since you are the instigators of this, that it shall be your task to select a suitable hero or heroine to go and fetch him."

Flora, Fauna and Merryweather stared, eyes wide. "OUR task, Your Majesty?"

Titania nodded, pleased and already counting their misadventures and failed attempts. "Yes. You are at fault. For the glory of the Fae you shall fix it.

"The Guardians need *OUR* help?" Flora managed finally.

"Yes." The Queen of the Fae repeated herself- AGAIN. ~My, what an unusual century this was becoming.~ "The realms of Faerie have helped seek out heroes many times throughout the eons. And for all your arguing, you three have some of the best instincts when it comes to choosing heroes and heroines."

Being a Queen, lying came easily to her. She really didn't care if they were good or not.

No, that must be corrected. She did care. She preferred if they were bumbling imbeciles. But couldn't be bothered to determine if they were true experts. She could not have replaced them on any account even if they were competent. The situation was already in motion.

"Not that we've been able to do any of that for centuries anyway." Fauna grumped. "There just isn't any use for heroes and heroines in this world, and all the young people are too interested in playing games to be in noble training. That young man we wish-granted was the first one we've seen in *ages* that had the potential to become a hero." The faerie remarked bitterly, revealing that they did know something of the proper selection.

The Queen gave an imperceptible shrug. "Well, this Earth is wide, and the three of you will need to find a person to bring him back. A girl." ~To start with. Smother the smile, mustn't let them suspect.~

Three sets of eyes glimmered in interest. It had been a *long* time since their expertise had been needed.

"For what?" Fauna asked eagerly. "We'll need to know if we're to find the right person."

Titania glanced at the mirror, reading the strange symbols easily. "According to a certain dimension's Guardian, their history was disrupted by the mortal's passing. They have a hiccup in their past, basically a gap in the cloth of Fate leading up to a person who doesn't exist, and never has. They will need a girl to help them as they fill that empty role. Send them one. She needs to be young, adaptable, and all those things a normal heroine needs."

"A HEROINE!" They cried out, aghast.

"But Majesty!" Merryweather protested. "In this day and age? That's impossible! They've *always* been scarcer than good heroes and finding one when so *few* people care about *anything* but themselves?"

~Drat! They DID know a thing or two about hero selecting. Hmm, one could only ask that they were at the least hopelessly out-of-date.~ The slightest frown coursed the brow of the pale Faerie Queen as she thought about this.

Fauna frowned, tapping a finger thoughtfully. "There is that sport we saw watching that strange picture box in that other mortal's house. Remember? I believe they called it fencing. I'm sure that if we began with that..."

~Oh, Good. Incompetence at last.~

"Still, a girl... who practices with swords... We cannot go near the Cold Iron remember?" Flora whimpered, most of her cheerfulness gone.

"Most objects are no longer created out of total Cold Iron." Fauna reproved. "And in any case, we managed to wish-grant the first mortal remember? HE did not wear Cold Iron. We will just catch the girl when she too doesn't."

"Is there anything else for us to do, Majesty?" Merryweather asked, turning to Titania, who had been listening.

Titania tapped her palm with her wand, thinking.

The Queen spoke. "Yes, I'm afraid the Unseelie know of this. A dimensional Guardian reports that because of this disruption, at the end of a crucial battle, a major arch-villain of our kind vanished instead of being vaporized. That problem will have to wait until she reappears, but as the first dimension reporting problems and this other one are currently within close quantum orbit of each other, there is a very good chance that the villain will appear in the dimension of your young girl as well." Titania glanced at her mirror one more time. "Find the girl, send her off. Then find a way to let her defeat the villain."

She disappeared suddenly.

"Well, I guess we have something to occupy our time other than sleeping and drinking tea." Flora said, smiling as she stretched her fingers, "Not as good as changing princes into toads, but I must say it's nice to be important again."

"You know, I think I know of the *perfect* girl for this." Fauna said thoughtfully.

"Here's something that might make your job easier." Titania said, suddenly appearing out of absolutely nowhere (which was pretty much the accepted mode of travel among the Fae). "The dimension the wish placed the male mortal in is the same one in which the girl is needed. When she is finished there, you may return them both to their homes." The tiny queen vanished, leaving the three faeries alone in the deserted, muddy area.

"You know, we have here the combination for a fairy tale!" Flora said excitedly, "A relatively handsome mortal..."

"Relatively? I would say something else entirely!" Merryweather said.

"Yeah, like ugly!" Fauna said caustically.

"You mean cute!"

"Well, we know what *your* tastes are like. After all, YOU chose that Galen for Ella's Prince Charming."

"It was my turn!" Merryweather protested. "And anyway, *you* got to choose the prince that woke Princess Aurora. *I* would have chosen that darling one with those deep blue eyes."

"Would you two listen to me?" Flora demanded, "What we have here is a beautiful chance for a fairy tale. We have two heroes, or at least a heroine and a hero, both of which will be beautiful..."

"But what if the girl isn't?" Merryweather asked.

"If you ask me the boy isn't already so bye-bye to THAT idea." Fauna muttered.

"Well, nobody asked *you*!"

"Oh, hush!"

"Would you two listen?" Flora snapped. "AND we have a missing arch villain wandering around the place."

"But we also have two Guardians waiting for us." Merryweather pointed out, "Come on, I know the most perfect girl for this! And even if she isn't beautiful, we can make sure she turns out to be at least conveniently attractive when she enters the dimension."

"At last! A new fairy tale!" Flora said as the three faeries slowly vanished.

"Do you think Titania and the others would mind though? I mean, we're not precisely sharing." Fauna said, uncertain at the last.

"We've got happiness in mind. And happiness is always good." Merryweather pointed out.

"I guess you're right."

All three fairies vanished.

~Oh, this is *perfect!*~ Titania thought, from her present disguise as a bush. ~I have GOT to rub Oberon's nose in this!~

She vanished away herself.

The muddy area around the pond was empty once more. A cold wind blew slowly, scattering a shower of leaves over the faerie circle. All that was left were several footprints left to dry in the mud, and as the gray sky slowly released the drizzle that had been threatening all morning, even those marks were demolished.

OoOoO

The red haired young man appeared mid-step on the front door of the Tendo dojo. He stopped, looking around himself, recognition dawning. "Oh no. Not this!" Quickly he scanned the place more thoroughly.

Yup, looked like it.

The young man shrugged.

In his mind he tapped upon a vast reserve of adaptability. This could be a dream, or real, but reality had always seemed less than the last word on real to him. Either way, adopt the parameters and begin to play the game.

Besides, he had control of his dreams that bordered on the absolute. He could stop time, reverse it, change fundamental laws... it had been awhile since he'd had anything that could classify as a nightmare. If this was a hallucination he was planning on enjoying it.

Either way, no good railing against it. He might as well have some fun.

Okay, Ranmaverse. That meant martial arts. He'd studied some but anything earthly would be unable to cope here. Swiftly he ran through the exercise of will that would alter reality to suit his whims. Adding abilities and powers that would allow him to get along comfortably here.

Nothing happened.

Odd. He hadn't been trying anything extreme. He focused again and threw more certainty into it. This *would* happen, he would not allow it to be otherwise.

Still nothing, except he got slightly dizzy.

The young man's brow furrowed. When was the last time he'd failed at this? Never. He could remember wrestling carnivorous witch dreams to the ground from his earliest childhood. Very, very strange. It was like the power to alter things just wasn't there to be used, which ruled out hallucination immediately.

So this was either real, or a very, *very* weird dream.

The young man tried to float. The last time he *couldn't* fly in a dream was so far lost in the mists of time that it might as well be never.

That had something to it, he rose about an inch, but the effort was completely out of proportion to what he was used to. He relaxed and settled back to the ground, clutching the gate for support and struggling not to throw up from pain and nausea. Well, it was bound to happen, wasn't it? Too much power, not enough perception. Some of the rules had changed. Whatever this was it wasn't a normal dream.

He looked at the sign beside the door, finding that he could understand it. Suddenly grateful that he'd consistently bought dubs (it would be odd always looking at people's feet to read what they were saying) he cleaned the mud off his feet and slipped on a pair of canvas shoes. Altering the universe was a problem to be tackled later, like when he really needed it. He knocked on the front door. Nabiki answered.

She blinked.

The young man opened his mouth to say "Nabiki Tendo, I presume?" But never got that far. The young lady STARED at him and then started to laugh.

"I'm sorry, you look just like that guy on TV. Jared Ornstead on Skysaber."

Jared rocked back on his heels.

In shock he mumbled out. "Um, since when did I become a TV show?"

Nabiki sobered instantly. "You've never *heard* of it? It's the most popular animated sitcom in Japan. Don't tell me you've never read about it or seen the merchandise."

He blinked.

She laughed again. "Oh! That shocked expression! It's *right* off of the series! C'mon in, I have to introduce you to everybody. They're not going to believe this!"

Hesitating, somewhat fearful, the young man followed the young lady into the house, remembering to kick off his shoes at the entrance. Nabiki stopped him just outside the parlor, having him wait just outside by the veranda while she stepped into where the family was eating.

"Hey gang," she sang. "You're not going to *believe* who just showed up."

"Who is it, Nabiki?" Kasumi's voice asked.

"Man, I hope it's not Kuno again." Ranma groused.

"Nothing so ordinary, Ranma." Nabiki crowed.

"Is it Ryoga?" Akane asked hopefully. "Has he found his way back yet?"

"Ja-red." Nabiki singsonged, in *exactly* the same way his brother did when calling him downstairs. Jared poked his head around the veranda screen doubtfully.

The assembled residents stared at him, then broke up laughing.

"Oh, man! He looks just *like* that guy!" Ranma rolled off his pillow, laughing too hard for balance.

Akane clutched her gut, weeping tears. "Hahahaha, he's, haha, even got the, hahahaha, facial expressions!"

Genma and Soun were clutching each other, unable to speak or do anything but laugh.

"Oh my." Kasumi was smiling merrily. "He DOES look like him, doesn't he?"

Jared stepped into the room, looking askance at the occupants.

Even Kasumi began giggling.

Jared threw a despairing look at the heavens. Seeing this the household rolled, unable to speak or even hear themselves over their merriment. With a resigned smile the redhead sat down and waited for his hosts to recover. However, everything he did seemed to draw points and gales of laughter, from a smirk of the lips to a shake of his head. Eventually he excused himself and went out to sit on the veranda.

His good humor was intact but his eyes were a little wild.

Kasumi, by far the noblest and most self-controlled of the Tendos, soon brought him out a cup of tea. She placed it beside him, her eyes merry and bright.

"Here you go."

He politely waved it away. "Thanks Kasumi, but I don't drink tea. It's..."

"...Against your religion." She finished for him. "This is spiced apple cider, no alcohol. You really *are* like that animated character." Her eyes suddenly flew wide. She put a hand to her cheek. "You... you know my name?"

His face fell into his hands. "This *can't* be happening! Yes, Kasumi. You are a bright angel and one of the most brilliant examples of endearing love ever to grace the Earth."

Akane leaned out onto the veranda. "Wow! You not only have the character you have the lines too! Where was that from? I don't remember which episode."

The rest of the family appeared around him. Soun Tendo spoke. "Well, it *could* have been from that part with Rebecca." The others regarded him like the idiot he was. So he put his hand behind his head and laughed in embarrassment. "No, I guess he never said that to Rebecca, did he?"

Genma spoke across folded arms. "Could it have been Jane, I wonder?"

Jared did a double-take. "Who?"

Everyone, Kasumi included, was rolling on their backs in the grass after that comment. Their laughter was almost painful when the redhead shamefacedly recalled that there *was* a girl named Jane he'd been friends with for several years, and people kept accusing them of being love interests.

He didn't know why he kept forgetting that.

Attention refocused on Jared when the laughter had died down. "So where *did* that line come from?" Nabiki pressed him. "It's not from the Shelley series, and you certainly never said that to Lisa or Paula. Could it be from the Amy special?"

The redhead blinked up at them. "You *know* about all that? Look, I just made it up. And how can you *possibly* know about all of my friends?"

The household suddenly regarded him in amazement. "You mean you honestly don't know?" Nabiki asked, somewhat in awe. "Here, let me show you something." The family took him inside and sat him down before the television set. Nabiki went to a cabinet and pulled out one of a whole line of tapes with similar sleeves. She showed it to him.

"Have you ever seen this before?"

Jared accepted the proffered video tape. It had a standard cardboard jacket, very real in his hands, emblazoned with the name 'Skysaber' in dashing, colored letters. In all it looked exactly like all the anime he'd ever bought, except that it was his face and name cartooned on the front.

And on the back a summary of that time he'd worked in the local library.

All the color fled from his face. He looked up to see everyone watching him. "So I'm an animated series?"

Akane regarded him in shock. "Wow. So you really don't know about it? Say, what's your real name anyway?"

He sighed. "My name, insofar as I can recall, is Jared Ornstead. Though on the internet I go by Skysaber. My mother's maiden name is..."

"...And your shoe size is nine." They all chorused, interrupting and quoting his sarcastic rebuke to stuffy bank tellers from memory.

He shivered uncontrollably. "Don't *DO* that!"

Nabiki leaned into him. "What is your name, really?"

Jared blinked back at her.

The young man composed himself. "Nabiki, I can offer you two possibilities. One, I am totally bonkers and just *think* I am who I say I am. Or Two, I really *am* who I say I am. Either way the only answer I have to give you is the same. My name is Jared, and I know this may sound crazy, but I remember YOU guys as the animated series."

Ranma leaned back, smiling. "No way. Who'd want to make a series out of us?"

Jared turned to regard him. "What, aren't you cursed that when you get hit with cold water you turn into a girl?"

Ranma's jaw dropped and his eyes bugged out. "What! How...how?"

The redhead turned to Nabiki. "And you take pictures of him asleep or when he's changing and sell them to the highest bidder, which just happens to be Kuno?"

Nabiki's eyes flew wide and she hid behind her arms.

Jared shook his head. "Look, I know Genma turns into a panda. I know Akane never tastes her own cooking until she's already poisoned every person she can catch with it..."

Kasumi had delicately put her hand over his mouth. "I don't think we need to hear any more, Jared."

He looked up at her, nodding. "Yeah. I guess I never realized before. It's all the *crummy* stuff that people think is funny, isn't it?"

She sat beside him, blushing. "Not always. For instance there is the way you dance in the bathroom."

The redhead recoiled. "You know about *that!*"

Nabiki laughed behind her hand. "Yeah, funny how you always hold the towel over exactly the right places. Well, *almost* always."

Jared blushed furiously, turning naturally rosy cheeks a deep red. Well, he'd seen *them* in the tub. He guessed it was only fair...

He bowed his head. "Yeah, well at least I have my girlfriends *sequentially*" He said, intending that as a dig against Ranma.

"Except Shelley and Rebecca." They all chorused.

The redhead winced. "Don't remind me."

Ranma was leaning against a pillow. "Man, I wish I knew how you got chicks. And why are you so afraid of them, anyhow? I mean, half those girls... Sheesh. *I'd* have figured out what to do from some of the places *you've* been in."

Jared looked at him.

"Can I just say I prefer wedding rings? And you're one to talk, Ranma. You've got girls like *anyone* would envy!"

Ranma blinked. "Huh? Whaddya mean?"

"The names Ukyo, Shampoo and Kaori mean anything? You're surrounded by women that any man could DROOL over! Not to mention all the attractive ones lying around the sidelines."

Nabiki tapped the redhead on the shoulder. "Who are you talking about? I know Shampoo, but those other two?"

Jared blinked at her. "Huh?" Then grew suspicious. "Say, what part of the series are we in, anyway? Has Happosai shown up? What about Kodachi? Have we had the martial arts takeout race?"

They looked at him uncomprehending. Genma and Soun showed shock at the first name, the others...

Jared's head sank into his hands, groaning. "Great. I get flung into an animated cartoon and all the stuff I could use to establish my identity hasn't happened yet. Look, on the first day Ranma got here he was a girl, right? Carried in by his dad who was a panda?"

They nodded.

"Okay then. Girl Ranma was carried over the panda's... left shoulder. Akane was relieved there wouldn't be an arranged marriage and took Ranma into the dojo for a little sparring practice? Ranma defeated her with ease? Then later *she* walked in on *him* in the bath and thought he was a pervert and hasn't forgiven him since? Even though *she* was the daughter elected to marry him?"

They nodded, a bit stunned.

Jared refocused himself, pleading. "Okay then. Look, um, it wouldn't be fun for you if I started spouting off about all the things *I've* seen. Can we just strike a deal and not mention any of the things in *my* series?"

If silence was consent he got a round of firm agreement, but it was more likely they were just too shocked to react.

Nabiki cocked her head. "You're going to hear about them eventually, you know."

The redhead considered this. Most popular series? Man, would he ever! If it was anything like TV back home then only the most reclusive wouldn't recognize him on sight! He'd probably run into people wearing Skysaber T-shirts and able to quote half his dialog from memory.

Jared's face had gone somewhat pale.

"This is not good."

Seeing his distress Kasumi moved to make it better. "There now, being famous is nothing to be ashamed of. I'm sure there are many ways that you can make it work for you. I'm sure Nabiki would be glad to help you."

"But at what price?" He asked. Then Jared allowed himself to be soothed.

Nabiki was regarding him. "Say, Jared. Have you got a place to stay?"

He indicated the negative.

"Oh, well then you can stay in one of our guest rooms." Kasumi offered before Nabiki could try charging rates. Which was good, as Jared didn't have a yen on him.

Nabiki seemed to sense this. "Hey Jared, haven't you got *any* money?"

He cocked an eyebrow at her.

"Right." She concluded. "Well, as your agent perhaps I could arrange a small loan..."

Both eyebrows fired.

"I think we can do a sixty-forty split." Nabiki offered.

Suddenly the shock of his acclimation crested his resistance and the redhead laughed, clutching his gut and doubling over. "Oh, Nabiki. How *typical!* Hahahahaha! Oh, man! Hehehehehe!" A grunt, then more laughter. "Nabiki, I'm willing to *consider* you... hahahaha... only because I... ohohoho... know of your talents. But... hehe, Don't try to... hehehe... use them on... haha... me."

Nabiki couldn't make up her mind to smile at him or scowl.

"Say Jared." Kasumi asked gently. "Isn't that the Standard Light Urban Survival Pack you're wearing?"

The redhead rolled back up from where he'd been laughing, touching a hand to his waist pouch. "Huh? How do you know...? Oh. I should have realized. Yes, this is it. Why?"

"May I see it?" She asked gently.

He handed it over in utter trust and without a word. Kasumi opened the zippered pouch and removed the wallet, then proceeded to count out several thousand yen. "I needed some money for shopping. Would you like to come along?"

Jared accepted the wallet and waist pouch's return. He strapped one on and looked into the other. Hmm, American dollars. On a hunch he focused for a second. Yup, the bills were now Japanese yen.

He'd have to learn more about this.

Real or dream was immaterial, it was just important to learn the rules.

Akane was looking at him in awe. "The Standard Light Urban Survival Pack? Cool! Does this mean you're carrying the Nerd Toy?"

They knew all the pets names for all his stuff? Sheesh! Well, it was only to be expected, he surmised. He knew what her underwear looked like. You could probably learn anything from anime.

Jared took out the laser pointer, thumbing the knob. With a vicious electric hiss a beam of pure energy shot forth from the pen, elongating into three feet of pure green lethal energy.

He nearly dropped it in shock. This was *not* how he remembered his laser pointer!

Ranma leaned back casually. "Yup. He's got it."

Jared released his pressure on the firing knob and the green energy blade vanished. "Sure, Kasumi, I'd love to go."

OoOoO

The sorceress braced herself, closing her eyes and lifting her arm to shield her face against the descending blow of the enchanted sword she knew would end her life.

The lady waited.

And waited.

Finally, the noises registered. The sounds were not the clashings of her faerie castle being destroyed around her as they had been only moments ago. They were instead mechanical, mortal, and human in nature; the cacophony of one of those worlds where technology had been discovered and run amok.

The sorceress warily dropped her arm, looking beyond the torn sleeve of her gown at the side of a brick building. Checking around herself she discovered she was indeed on a mortal world, one with the Fae power so dormant as to be nonexistent in most people.

And one utterly, and completely vulnerable to her style of influence.

After leaning against the building for long moments, the depleted sorceress regained her breath and pushed herself to a standing position. By this time an officer of the law had poked his head into the alley to observe her. Almost idly the faerie ensnared his mind.

She sat down upon a barrel head, smoothing her torn skirts. "Now," she gave her new servant commands. "Tell me of your world, and how I might gain power in it."

OoOoO

"I found him!" Merryweather called, sitting beside a toadstool with a completely incongruous video monitor implanted in its side.

"Where?" Flora and Fauna appeared over her shoulders, hovering on their tiny wings.

"He's only just warped in." Merryweather pointed out on the screen.

"Well, we'll put a stop to *that*" Flora waved her wand, agitating up a good cloud of sparkles. Then she shot them out in a beam toward the monitor.

The beam rebounded and transformed her into a toad.

"Oh my goodness!" Fauna cried.

"What could have happened?" Merryweather asked, turning away from the screen and using her own wand to restore Flora.

Flora sighed, straightening her dress. "I should have realized. He hasn't fulfilled his wish yet. And without the power to undo that, which we don't seem to have, we're not going to be able to keep him from gaining whatever it is he wished for."

"What *did* he wish for? I don't seem to recall." Fauna put one hand to the side of her chin in thought.

"I don't seem to remember, either." Merryweather groaned.

"I'm sure it will come to us in time." Flora quipped. "But for now, how are we going to stop him until we can get him back home?"

"Don't you have that backwards?"

"Hmm?"

"Shouldn't it be 'how are we going to get him back home so we can stop him?'"

"Maybe you're right."

"Come. We've got to get that heroine moving. She looks like she'll be our only chance, now that direct intervention is out of the question." Flora vanished.

The other two followed, appearing in the rain, concealing themselves in some bushes behind a bus stop.

OoOoO

In a plane of mists and soft light, a young woman with long hair stirred her head from lying on the ground to see a figure in a familiar uniform approaching. The young woman's eyes widened as they found recognition.

"Sailor Pluto."

"Please do not be afraid." The tall, green haired woman said as she strode through the mists toward the awakening young lady. "As you have said, I am Susan, Sailor Pluto, and Guardian of the Key of Time."

The young lady spent several long moments deliberating that.

"I know this might be rather an obvious thing to ask." The young lady finally said, rising slowly to her hands and knees. "But where am I?"

Then Fiona shook her head and tried to clear it. "No, come to think of it, that's really a dumb question. Obviously I'm somewhere in the mists of time, near the Gate of Time which *you* guard." She shook her head again and brought herself unsteadily to stand. "All I really want to know right now is: Why am I here? I mean, I know that I was tired. But I rarely ever fall asleep on the bus, let alone the bus stop! And to be perfectly honest, if I was dreaming this I don't think I'd need to go to the bathroom quite this badly."

Susan smiled then, "But you aren't asleep, Fiona, nor are you dreaming. You have been called by Destiny." And a few Faeries, but Susan wouldn't mention that. She rarely ever did go into those kind of details. "You have been transported from your world to ours in order to fulfill a great need we have for one such as you."

Fiona stared at her for a long moment. "You need high school students so bad you're importing them?"

Susan was unruffled. "Our timeline has been disrupted. As the Guardian of the Key of Time it is my responsibility to repair the damage. You were chosen because of your qualifications, among them your age, yes." The Sailor took a step back into the mists. "Come, follow me, and I shall explain."

The girl followed after the Sailor, mystified, unable even to *think* of what to think when faced with something as strange as this occurring. Especially on a Monday morning.

OoOoO

Jared had what he casually considered to be his 'hind brain.' Named whimsically enough when he'd read that dinosaurs usually had two brains, one in the usual place and one at the hind end of their spine. This was because their bodies were so huge that the nerve impulses took so long to reach the hind set of limbs that they'd be even more clumsy and ungainly without one.

Jared was neither clumsy nor ungainly. In fact running across poles was only one stunt he'd done in a normal universe. By any non-anime standard he was almost unnaturally dexterous. But his feet seemed to have a mind of their own. It wasn't that they disobeyed him, but they remembered stuff. It was freaky. Several times he had been stuck in a strange town with no local maps and no one to guide him and been able to find his way about flawlessly anyway.

He could retrace near any path he'd followed and could get to nearly anyplace he'd ever been. In fact there had been that one time, first day in a new town, he'd just dropped off his luggage at a new place before being dragged off to do something else. The other person had driven him, dropped him off, and left him without a word how to get back to his place, no one to direct him, and only his feet to take him there.

He'd gone beeline back to his apartment.

Jared supposed that made him a reverse Ryoga. He'd been lost fewer times than Ryoga had found his way. And that's why he needed no greater proof of anything being real than the fact that his feet were mapping the territory he was now on. They weren't following any trails, nor were they reporting to him any nearby trails they'd followed. This was new turf.

But at least after today he'd be able to find the market from the Tendo place.

As he and Kasumi approached the market they were drawing interested stares from the passers by and shopkeepers. He grew severely uncomfortable when several people just stopped what they were doing to stare at him until he'd passed out of sight.

"Ah, Kasumi? Could we maybe do something about my appearance? I appear to be instantly recognizable."

She looked sideways at him but did not seem displeased. "Well, the clothes you wear *are* very distinctive, Jared. Do you have anything besides shorts?"

Well, the pair he was wearing *was* a little distinctive, wasn't it? They were blue with an elastic waist, and due to some manufacturing error the drawstring was quite long, hanging down to just below his knees.

He'd found the day after he'd bought them that the knotted loop at the end of the drawstring tended to bounce off his knees as he walked. Somehow he'd adjusted his gait so that with every step the knot would bounce forward off the knee, never really falling back and alternating between one leg and the other as he took each step.

Come to think of it, it was every bit as noticeable as Ranma's walking on fences. But he liked the feeling.

He slipped the loop over his left thumb to stop its bouncing and reached into his waist pouch, pulling out his favorite pair of shades.

Kasumi sighed. "Now you're even *more* distinctive, Jared."

He shrugged, realizing she was absolutely right. But lacking a suitable disguise he was stuck between the choices of uselessly pretending not to be him or flaunting it. "Okay, Kasumi. I guess I'll just get noticed then. Should I go home?"

She shook her head, smiling. "No. After all, I have a great deal to get, and your mother trained good pack animals."

He mock-scowled at her. "That's *my* line." But it was true. A shopping cart could carry more than him, but not by much. He and his brothers could empty a car full of groceries (groceries for a *large* and hungry family) in a single trip. It didn't even require all of them usually.

Kasumi just beamed. "Oh, well. Stay close by, will you? I have a lot to get today and I may need more now that you'll be living with us." She turned on an angelic grin. "And to quote you, 'I've no idea how they get it to me, but I've never come to the end of my expense account yet, and supplies for my support group are as approved an item as I can think of.'"

Hearing Kasumi quoting *him* was enough to trip several of his weird circuits. Even if he couldn't recall what situation she'd been quoting, just hearing her get *his* cadence right was downright eerie.

Whispers began in the marketplace.

OoOoO

The faerie sorceress walked into an internationally renowned dressmaker's shop, dropping stacks of this ridiculous paper money it was so easy to conjure, and demanding to be served.

~A world of money indeed. Loyalty, land and honor all available for a price?~ It seemed intriguing.

Well, she would see. The faerie simply dropped a stack of bills upon the desk of the flustered serving girl waiting in the place where a guard or page ought to be, and demanded a level of service that would've gotten her thrown out of any royal clothier's where they didn't know her on sight.

Instead, the matron of the shop was summoned and personally began showing the sorceress the styles of the age. Intrigued to find her information correct thus far, the faerie asked what the ladies of power wore and was shown to a private side chamber where women were brought out to model the season's styles for her.

They began with what they called business suits.

Business suits, the sorceress concluded after seeing her first, were attire fit only for servants. They were livery for servants without masters, and as dreary and without luster or grace as it was possible for garments to be, without a proper ruler to decree their style and give them color or direction.

It was a silly way to run a world.

Aspiring to be a slightly higher rank of servant amongst hordes of others had never been one of this sorceress' wishes. She ordered the livery taken away and demanded to see their gowns, and when those uninspiring rags failed to please her she began to dictate to them her wishes.

She was a daughter of Morgan le Fae. Her mother had raised her to be a queen and a queen she would be. How lucky for her to be snatched from disaster and come upon a world of servants, ruled by chief servants, only waiting for an appropriate ruler to appear. It needed only for her to take over the reins of as much of their world as she pleased. From what the policeman had said there were not even any true kings to seduce.

Perhaps that was for the best. She could never understand what her mother had gotten out of it anyway.

Besides, if the officer who was now her servant had said the truth, then anything could be had for money here anyway. Faerie gold was easy to conjure but could not withstand the touch of iron. These silly papers could be conjured by the warehouse full in any denomination desired, without that weakness.

Infinite wealth in a world where anything could be had for a price? A silly world indeed.

Conquest by purchase. She could buy herself a large kingdom and then suit it to her tastes. Something where there was a great deal of land available all at once, so she could arrange for something in a few weeks, as opposed to waiting tedious years for the mortals to make up their minds.

She would have to find out if there truly were governments for sale, as the officer had said. That ought to speed up the process by quite a bit. How much easier that would be than to enchant them all one by one. And if they were reluctant for some reason, they were merely peasants, a few calamities should convince them otherwise.

Speaking of calamities brought to mind those who always sought to prevent them. It ought to be interesting to see what sort of heroes lurked here. Her mother had always found destroying knights to be an intriguing way to pass the centuries. But then, there were no Knights of the Round here. In fact, scrupulous morals were not much of an issue at all from what she'd seen. Girls parading their lack of virtue over paintings hung from buildings in order to sell a brand of bottled drink? It was a world of dry tinder and she the only match.

As the dressmakers fitted her for her new gowns the sorceress wondered which of the nations were available for sale and how she might go about buying one.

OoOoO

After a meaningless amount of time walking Susan stopped. As Fiona caught up, the air before them coalesced into a mirror-like surface, showing a glowing, blue ball that the girl easily recognized as Earth.

"This is my universe." Sailor Pluto said. "And this is where the problem has come to plague us. Several hours ago, a wish was granted to a young mortal of your world. In your dimension, there is a cartoon known as Sailor Moon. Do you know of it?"

"Know of it?" Fiona laughed, though the sound was more bewildered than not. "I'm a major fan of it! I've watched every single cartoon they have in English."

Susan nodded, "That will make understanding far more easy. You have heard of the Moon Kingdom? And the Negaverse Wars that forced Queen Serenity to use the Silver Imperial Crystal, sending all her children to the future... our present now?"

"Of course. It was the subplot and secret of the whole first season."

"That may be the last 'season' you will be familiar with. The wish has placed the young man from your world into a position to disrupt the flow of time. Our Sailors are still weak and forgetful from having faced Queen Beryl. It is a vulnerable time for them. By himself this boy would be of little concern and easily neutralized, but there are other factors that he now serves as a balance against."

"And your point is?" Fiona continued to dream wistfully of bathrooms.

Susan turned an inscrutable gaze on her young guest. "There is an evil factor that has gained contact with our world at the same time as the young man from yours. The balance of Fates places him against them. I cannot remove him to send him back to your world without first untangling that web."

"So I'm supposed to take this evil force out so that you can get rid of the guy, am I right?" Fiona displayed her sharp wits.

Pluto looked inscrutable, thinking inwardly that that was not at all a bad idea. If she shifted her own plots around a bit that would be an ideal plan.

"I'll take that as a yes." Fiona glowered at the inscrutable expression, trying not to be obviously rubbing her legs together.

Pluto turned her back to face the mirror showing the Earth. "That was not the only reason for our calling you. The boy's entry caused damage to our world beyond his mere presence and the attention of this evil power. The very fabric of our history has been torn, including, among other things less severe, critical damage done to the past of the Moon Kingdom."

Pluto turned to regard her young companion. "As the young mortal entered our dimension, the entire Silver Millennium was altered. It is a disturbance that I will need your help to correct."

Susan went on to instruct. "Our Silver Millennium bears almost no resemblance to what it was. The alterations have swept our past and will shortly impact our present. As a precaution and a measure to prevent our original history from being swept aside, it is my intention to use the majority of my skills to buffer against the onrushing change. I am also going to be taking advantage of certain changes to work against the others, keeping them in check until our original history can be restored. To do this, I am going to introduce a divergence of my own, that I am hoping will act with some alterations against the others to hold them all at bay."

Susan didn't usually explain in *any* detail and thought she was giving her young charge quite a treat. Fiona was trying hard not to imagine her eyeballs turning yellow. Fiona was certain this was dramatic and all that, but the long speeches were becoming *very* uncomfortable. Her fantasies had never included her squeezing her legs together to avoid an accident while the long introductions were going on.

Susan continued. "You no doubt have knowledge of the fated destiny that binds Serena and Darien together, a Prince of Earth to wed the future Queen of the Moon. Now our disturbed past is spawning a companion fate, one with an odd sense of balance that *might* have belonged, and yet truly does not. This ripple in reality has set in motion a destiny where a princess of the moon must marry the future King of Earth. So, that those destinies not be tangled and draw forth unseen consequences, I will create within this disturbed fate a second Princess of the Moon."

Susan waved her staff dramatically and called forth a door from the mists. A pink one whose frame was set with dozens of silvery moon crescents. "You will serve as advisor to..."

"Thank God!" Fiona saw a door with a half moon on the front and dove through faster than thought.

Susan found she was speaking to air and there was a rather large surge of light from beyond the doorway. Her thought of having the door open dramatically to reveal a construct of Fate that would last for the duration of the present emergency suddenly grew wings and flew out her ear. Her mouth opened and closed a few times.

The door opened again a moment later and Fiona stepped out in a long white gown. "Magic Toilets? I can't even figure out what happened, but at least I don't have to go anymore." She looked down and took hold of the skirt of her gown. "Hey! I look like I'm dressed for a ball in the Moon Kingdom!" She pirouetted and spun, coming to a stop before Sailor Pluto.

"Okay, I'm ready to listen now."

Susan blinked at her several times without saying anything.

The universe sweatdropped.

OoOoO

Jared was humming a slavery dirge when they finally got to the Tendo home. He was loaded under packs and bags until he looked like a pack animal in truth. Yet still he somehow managed to navigate the doors and squeeze in.

The crowd that had followed them home from the market dispersed.

Jared had found the whole expedition odd. Okay, so he could ordinarily carry alot of stuff. But *nothing* like Kasumi had loaded him down with. Bulk was not a problem, he could deal with it. He'd carried a rolled-up 8'x12' Persian carpet over one shoulder through a practical maze of tight doors, sharp turns, and narrow steps before. But half the bags here were of canned goods and staples, bags that weighed *alot* and would normally cut through his fingers if he tried to carry them too far.

The weight hadn't been a problem, not at all. And his unnatural dexterity had done the rest.

Kasumi guided him into the kitchen and began unpacking him. He'd lost his shoes at the door (even burdened as he was it wasn't a problem to obey house rules) and assisted Kasumi by rapidly untangling himself, laying down his load on available counter space.

"Thank you, Jared. That was very sweet of you."

Okay, relieved from civic service for the evening. He could deal with that. He removed from one bag a book he'd insisted they'd buy and went out to sit on the grass and enjoy the lack of sun. He lay back opening his book and soon saw the clouds and branches were not the only things blocking out the light.

"Kodachi."

The Kuno female scion smiled down at him from the tree above him. "Well, I can see poor Sasuke was right. You really *are* the very image of that character. Tell me, can you laugh?"

"Mad Scientist, Villain, or plain?"

The gymnast nodded, sweeping him up into the tree alongside her with her ribbon. "That was answer enough, my fine one. Tell me, are you all that you are said to be?"

He shifted uncomfortably. "That depends on what I am said to be. But it seems likely that parts of it, at least, are exaggerated."

She released him. "Well, then. A modest superstar. I am thrilled that you sought me out to make my acquaintance. We'll meet again." Kodachi leaped away laughing.

Yup, she was loony.

But it was a happy loony. Jared had hung out with far crazier people. He went and grabbed his book and went inside. Maybe the videos could tell him something.

OoOoO

With trembling hand and hesitation bordering on phobia Sailor Pluto handed Fiona a transformation pen. "In order to put pause on the tangling of Fate you shall stand as the of Protector of Earth, though remember you have no duties. This is to put a patch on the reweaving of destinies only."

"Gee, I though Darien already had that role." Fiona took the pen gladly and began to run her fingers over it, turning it over and examining it adoringly.

~Gulp.~

"No, that was not to be his role. Darien was a Prince of Earth, yes. But in spite of that being his origin he was destined to become the consort and protector of the New Queen Serenity."

"Oh. How do you make these things work? Just hold it over your head and shout, Earth..."

Susan removed her hand from the young lady's mouth. "We'll go over that when it comes time." ~Which it never will, so don't worry.~ "Now, this is very important, in our original timeline, Earth was just another adjunct to the Moon Kingdom. What is rapidly forming is a history where there was an alliance of civilized worlds, each with its own rulers under the united reign of Queen Serenity. While not a *bad* thing this is not what time was meant to have been. And so we must act to prevent it. What I need you to do is..."

"Why must we prevent it?"

Susan smiled evenly. "Well, among other things, if this change is allowed to proceed unchecked you will eventually be married to the King of Earth. So..."

"Is he cute?"

Susan blinked again. "Is who what?"

Fiona looked up from her examination of her transformation rod. "This king guy, is he cute?"

"He doesn't exist yet." Sailor Pluto answered honestly.

"Then how am I supposed to marry him?"

The green-haired Sailor spent several moments unbending that. With relief, she sighed. "Don't worry. You won't have to. Now..."

"'Cause I could never marry him if he wasn't cute."

Susan just smiled mysteriously to let the other person think what she wanted, but inwardly decided that maybe her interpersonal skills needed some work. Being alone for long stretches of guardianship hadn't been supposed to impact them *too* badly. But when it came to there being a complete inability for her to converse with another human maybe she'd been alone too long.

"And had a nice car." Fiona related. "'Cause if he didn't have one then how could he take me out to the movies on dates?"

Sailor Pluto continued smiling, her left eye twitching almost unnoticeably. "That is not supposed to matter, you know. We are working to prevent..."

"Would he have a big house?"

Sailor Pluto blinked and tried *not* to sweatdrop, failing ever so lightly. "I'm sorry, why do all the possessions of this nonexistent person trouble you so much?"

"Would *you* marry him if he was poor? What if he couldn't even afford to give you dresses or chocolate?" The girl stared up at the green haired Sailor.

Susan blinked in rapidfire staccato, then smiled weakly. "It's not my job to marry him. I have to work against him even showing up."

Fiona turned up large, soulful eyes. "But what if it was?"

"Excuse me?" Sailor Pluto froze into immobility. ~Wasn't there something about having some control over time that was to prevent being caught off-guard like this?~

Fiona sighed. "Suppose I couldn't, and *you* had to. Would you marry this king if he was poor?"

"He's going to be a king." Susan finally replied. "He could have any house, as large or small, as he wanted, and own the nicest car there ever was..."

Fiona frowned. "If you have *too* nice a car then you can't ever park it 'cause other people would ding it up." She intoned wisely.

~Were all people this hard to deal with?~

"Fiona, if this person comes into being he would be the King of Earth. He could use the continent of Africa for a parking lot if he wanted."

The young lady was shaking her head. "Nope. Africa isn't close to anything. Who'd want to walk that far?"

Pluto was going insane.

OoOoO

Ranma-chan came in from practicing to find Jared in front of the tube, a stack of Skysaber videos around him. He was looking slightly sick.

Ranma-chan was drying her hair. "Hey, what's up? I thought you didn't *want* to know that stuff?"

Jared turned a green face to look at her. "And I was right. You'd think from this that I'd never spent a normal day! And *some* of that stuff! Gah! Okay, I've had alot of friends, and most of them were girls. I guess that makes them technically girlfriends. But this has every single one of them trying to seduce me!"

Nabiki leaned in. "Ranma, could you come out here please?"

Ranma left. Behind him, Jared was putting away the stack of tapes with a look of disgust. Nabiki grabbed her confederate and dragged him away to the far corner of the lawn.

"Ranma, I think this guy really *is* the genuine article. You've seen how he reacted to his tapes? Well, for scientific purposes, I made a pass at him. He didn't even *notice!* I always thought it was a bit far fetched that a guy that good looking could be so innocent about girls and still so good at all the romantic stuff. I mean, doesn't that seem odd to you? That he could be so good about the game yet indifferent, even oblivious, to victory?"

Ranma wasn't an expert on these things, but it was always easier to observe from the outside, and anime (and sitcoms, for that matter) tended to grind your face in details like that.

"Yeah, Nabiki, it's really strange." Ranma-chan agreed, thinking how odd it was that anyone could miss anything so obvious.

OoOoO

From within a light fixture the three faeries looked on.

"Well, we've followed him. Now what do we do?" Merryweather remarked.

"He wasn't hard to find, dearie. It seems that more than half his belongings were enchanted by that little wish of ours. We'd have to be a great deal more out of practice than we are not to find so many items of Faerie."

"How'd he get an everfull purse?"

Flora tapped her wand agitatedly against her chin at Merryweather's question. She peered more closely at the belongings of the young man they were tracking. "Oh, my goodness! Do you see what he's done with it?"

"What is it, Flora?"

"A VERY solid multi-part enchantment. You'd think Oberon himself had done this one, and so very complicated too! I'm more the type to grant enchanted armor, myself. But I have to admit that in a modern society this enchanted gear would be more useful."

Fauna flew up to look over her shoulder.

"What does it do?"

"Hush, dear. Best if he finds out and we just watch him go about it."

OoOoO

Back in the house, Jared had abandoned for the moment his attempt to study the official materials and figured something out on his own. It was not random that his waist pouch and laser pointer both had powers. It seemed that both were items he was rarely without, and as such had undergone some sort of anime transformation.

Made sense in a way. Normal life didn't make for great anime. Not unless that normal life was swiftly shattered by aliens, magic, mecha or battlesuits.

That was why he was presently involved in examining his watch. Even more than his pouch or nerd toy this was something he'd always had with him. It was the One True Watch, so named because half his brothers had bought identical ones and they had mock arguments as to which was better. It was sleek, black and digital, and normal enough in appearance that you didn't at first realize that it had more computing power than NASA did during the space administration. It simultaneously tracked time in all zones of the world, had multiple, programmable alarms, acted as a stopwatch, a timer, kept track of telephone numbers...

...He even had it remembering people's birthdays.

It was *quite* a watch, and right now he was trying to figure it out. If anything, this deserved a place in what he was beginning to think of as his 'Superspy Survival Kit.' The interface had altered somewhat during the transition. But so far he hadn't found anything interesting.

Kasumi came in. "Ah, Jared, there you are. I was wondering if you would call the Cat Cafe for me. I promised to invite Shampoo and Cologne over the next time we were having sweet buns, and Akane is on the phone right now."

The redhead cocked his head at her curiously. "Then how do I call them?"

Kasumi reacted with surprise that an explanation was even required. "Use the nerd toy."

Jared took out the object and looked at it. On a hunch he squeezed its middle. Two arms snapped out, unfolding like a Swiss army knife, one to speak in, one to listen from. His watch face began blinking. On impulse he typed the number Kasumi gave him into the watch's control panel.

Through the nerd toy he began to hear ringing.

Made sense. He'd grown up a nerd and nerds *liked* their toys to have more than one function. That the watch and nerd toy were somehow a linked set seemed somewhat obvious when he thought about it. Someone answered on the other end.

"Cat Cafe, what you order?"

"Shampoo?" He asked. "Yes, this is... uh, this is Skysaber. I'm over at the Tendo home right now. Kasumi just asked me to call."

"You stupid crank-caller." The voice on the other end said. "No such person as Skysaber. Why you try and fool Shampoo?"

He sighed. "Shampoo, it truly doesn't matter. Kasumi says they're having sweet buns tonight and asked that I call and invite you and your great grandmother. Would you care to come?"

There was silence on the other end for awhile. "Okay, great grandmother say we come. But if you lie to Shampoo..."

Jared got one of those weird whims that got him into so much trouble. Almost unable to help himself he slipped into a flawless copy of her accent and cried out into the phone. "Aiyah! Shampoo no believe Skysaber? Skysaber kill!"

You could *hear* the blinking on the other end.

Shampoo's voice came again. "Oooh, you IS Skysaber! Shampoo send order right away!"

Smirk.

"Skysaber no ask you send order, Cat-Girl! Skysaber ask you come be guest, eat sweet buns with Violent Girl and Too-Too-Nice-Girl and Nasty Extortionist Girl and Shampoo's Airen! Be nice nice and bring great grandmother, okay?"

Several silent moments, then...

"Why anime star stay at Tendos?"

More smirking.

"Is contract. Strange person come to Nerima, has something to do with Ranma, yes? Skysaber have no...uhm, what word? Skysaber not know why, just come. Arrive at Tendos'. Maybe find out why here later."

"You sure you Skysaber? You not nasty, violent maniac come to hurt Airen?"

Rather than deal with the unspoken threat Jared handed the nerd toy over to Kasumi. She held it to her ear and began speaking to Shampoo while he collapsed, laughing, into the background.

"Yes, Shampoo?" She smiled, as if the glow could be seen through the phone. "Yes, I'm afraid that *was* Jared. He's being very sweet letting me use the nerd toy to call you. You know how protective he is of it. Yes, that's right. We'll expect you in half an hour then. Goodbye."

She handed the nerd toy back, the arms were already retracting into pen shape. The redhead rolled up and accepted it, slipping it back in his pouch.

"Ah, Kasumi?" He asked, stopping her from getting up immediately. "Where did I get all this fancy stuff? It's not the sort of thing you normally find on an actor, artist, or whatever else I've been this week."

She blinked. "Oh, that's right. You didn't get them until later, when you became an international superspy adventurer. If you'll excuse me, dinner is nearly ready and it needs my attention."

She got up and left.

Jared leaned back. Superspy? Why did that send shuddering chills down his spine? The whimsical label for the abilities his stuff had gained came back to haunt him. Why did it seem like everything he thought or did somebody was always viewing in the past tense and wondering why it was taking him so long to catch up?

He'd never had the inclination toward espionage anyway. He would watch the tapes and learn more but it was frankly painful. All those little details that you never really wanted anyone to know about being plastered all over the screen and dwelt on.

Good for laughs, but when it was your life being plastered it was as painful as a gut wound. Less traumatic to learn everything by running smack into it and getting a few bumps from the experience.

Nabiki and Ranma were leaning in the door and had been staring at him.

Jared leaned back to regard the ceiling. "Why do I feel like I'm not in control of this situation?"

With a trepidacious hand, he reached out and picked up his book again.

The phone rang.

Soun emerged from his newspaper and indicated that he should get it.

Jared lifted the telephone handset, in his distress forgetting himself momentarily and answering it in his usual mode of 'discourage telemarketers'.

"Mouse fat, follicle and goose creature?" He said in the same tone of voice as a secretary answering for a business.

The person on the other end spent minutes laughing until Skysaber finally hung up on him. Soun had disappeared behind his paper and was trying hard not to break out roaring in obvious, absurd glee himself.

The phone rang again.

Soun sobered himself completely for just long enough to indicate again that the young man should get it.

Jared answered with the next set of random words to pop into his mind.

"Demented lunatics dot com."

The newspaper shook with concealed laughter.

Jared tolerantly reflected that this was going to be a long evening.

OoOoO

Flora tapped her wand in great agitation, pacing back and forth thinking. "We have *got* to cause that boy trouble somehow. But how? If things go undisturbed as they are..."

"He might have a happy ending?" Merryweather queried.

"Now what would be so bad about that?" Fauna inquired, emerging from the depths of one of Nabiki's open manga.

Flora didn't calm down in the slightest. "THAT doesn't concern me so. It's the *irregularity* of the whole arrangement that troubles me! Here he's got himself a whole collection of magical Fae items when we usually only give them out one at a time, and haven't given them for centuries at any rate. THEN there's the fact that there's not one, decent, limiting factor involved. No using it only til midnight, or by the light of the moon, or within the bounds of a forest, or even disappearing with sunlight!" Flora hopped and came to a disgruntled seat on the shade of a desk lamp. "I tell you we've not given out such a store of special items since the last dragon war mistake when the same prince had to fight the dragons, rescue a princess from a hill of glass *and* cure his father's rheumatism! It's unnatural."

"Rheumatism?" Fauna blinked.

"It was only a third rate curse." Merryweather explained.

Flora wondered briefly what the other two were talking about.

"So are you objecting that he *has* those things or that he doesn't appear to have any use for them?" Fauna ventured to ask the older faerie.

Flora's wand began to fountain sparks as her eyes came alight with excitement. She quickly floated to a bouncing little drop and ushered in her two friends. "Oh! That gives me an idea!"

"Are you saying we should give him rheumatism?" Merryweather doubted.

"I don't think it would work." Fauna hesitated. "If he has any control over..."

"No, no, no. It was the *purpose* that gave me an idea." Flora enthused, finally getting what she felt was a good course of action. She resumed pacing, but it served merely to emphasize her words. "It should be plain that this boy wanted to become some kind of hero. I don't see why we didn't see that at first, after all, he *is* qualified. And what else could all that practice have been about? No, we only have to see that he gets to be properly heroic doing something and then we can turn him into a toad and leave him in a pond somewhere. It will be the end of our problems!"

"No happy ending?" Fauna gently objected.

"It can be happy," Flora conceded. "It just won't be ever after, is all. We'll let him slay the dragon or marry the princess or whatever and *then* zap him."

"I don't like that plan." Merryweather began to get huffy.

"Oh dear," Fauna looked back and forth between the two, knowing they would never compromise. And she *so* wanted a happy ending herself, too. She risked her own reply to Flora. "No, I don't think that would work. For one thing we haven't got any dragons or princesses handy."

"There's at least one, the Moon Princess."

"But she's spoken for. It's a Destined Romance. We're supposed to be good faeries. We can't interfere with one of those." Merryweather felt her objections were gaining some headway.

"Oh." Flora deflated.

Fauna used her wand and pulled out a manga that had no right to be in this universe. Stepping onto the pages, she indicated a few frames. "How about we put him in this story?" She asked of her fellows.

"Does it have any princesses in it?" Merryweather floated over to see for herself.

Flora floated over herself, reading a few pages that they used sparkles to turn. "Interesting. I see potential for the characters, but I'm not sure that this Herb person qualifies as a dragon."

"How does it end?" Merryweather poked in.

Fauna looked around. "Well, I'm not sure there's an *official* ending..."

"You can't have a story without an ending!" The blue faerie protested, floating up into the air in her agitation.

Fauna appeared anxious. "Well, I don't know that there ever was a finish written by the author. But this is at least one of the more *influential* of the endings proposed by her court."

She pulled out of space a printed out copy of The Bitter End by Zen. The three faeries perused it. After Fauna had waved her wand and transformed it to manga format for easier reading, that is.

"Not very happy, is it?" Merryweather concluded at the end of it.

Even Flora was shaking her head. "No, we'd have to be Unseelie to do that one. Besides, this story is more about street brawling than any *true* quests. Haven't you got anything where the world is at stake?"

Fauna pulled out another manga that had no right to be there. They flipped through it for some long minutes. "It has promise." Flora finally concluded. "And the power levels are about right. We wouldn't want all of that equipment of his to go to waste, though, and it doesn't seem to fit right for some reason. I would *like* to involve him in this. But perhaps we should think of something else as well."

Sighing mournfully, Merryweather backed up against an untidy stack of Nabiki's recently-read and not yet replaced manga. Her tiny weight brought the stack down on her.

"Oh!"

"Merryweather!"

Both other faeries flitted over and used their wands to unbury her. When they lifted off the last book Merryweather's eyes were round and she sparkled to the other two faeries. "I have an idea!" She offered excitedly.

"What is it?" Her friends both chorused.

Merryweather's expression grew cunning. "Okay, but if you agree to it then you have to agree to a happy ending."

"We'll see." Flora primly refused to surrender.

"Perhaps if we agree not to cause him hurt ourselves." Fauna tried to act as go between. Though it meant that they could cause all sorts of trouble and still lead him to some of the worst messes they could find, there still *might* be a happy ending.

All the faeries had figured that out automatically. Both others peeked out of their fortresses of crossed arms and closed eyes, judging the other's reaction.

"Agreed." Both replied at the same time.

Merryweather then hopped up on the stack of books that had fallen on her, highlighting with her wand the title on an upright volume 'Skysaber.'

"See? It's the *perfect* story!"

The trio spent only moments perusing, even Flora emerged glowing. "You know, I think you're right!"

The door opened and the three instantly vanished in diminutive clouds of short-lived sparkles. Nabiki entered her room, caught note of the disarray, and went to straighten her fallen manga collection.

In moments she was lifting out the few that didn't belong. "Ranma 1/2? Sailor Moon? Hmm, interesting." Fitting a rice cracker between her teeth she sat down and began to read.

OoOoO

To be continued...

OoOoO

The Oberon for this piece is one who has a great deal of power and experience, yet is bored beyond belief and so likes to savor each victory and make each kill last a long time.

In other words he isn't used to working hard at anything, and isn't in any hurry to win in any case. He feels he has infinite opportunities to try without ever being in any kind of real danger.

Other words: Cocky, overconfident, yet remaining brilliant and powerful. Also his status in the Unseelie Court is a great secret, as he passes himself off in the opposing Seelie court as Titiana's sortuv rascally second in command. The getting out of this secret would hurt him more than any other thing a mortal could do.

It would also ensure said mortal's demise. 


	2. Chapter 2

Otaku Reflected

Episode One, Part Two  
Marshaling of Sides

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

The air rippled and a Prince of the Fae stepped forward, noting behind him the fading trail of magical energies of the spell which had carried him thither. Oberon's directive, to gather a truly impressive harem for the King of the UnSeelie, was to be implemented. However, Oberon had also commanded that it be done with style.

Apparently the latest meeting between Queen Titania and the king hadn't gone all that well. Names had been called, insults exchanged, and the royal architects were now rebuilding a wing of the Castle Fae. Replacing those mountains would be a little more difficult.

Shuras wasn't familiar with the series, or he would have related being at the Faerie Court with the King and Queen both present to being stuck in a Dragonball Z episode. Sooner or later, the fight would start and woe to anything caught in the blast radius.

So the dark elf mage wasn't terribly unhappy with being assigned to an entirely different dimension. Just the lack of work required to restore people and things to their true forms would have made him much more pleasant about this task.

Pleasant for someone who considers ritual dissection and feeding live enemies to hordes of monster spiders elegant pastimes was not likely to be anything anyone else would use the term for.

Scanning around the street, he garbed himself via illusion in a casual suit and sport jacket, complete with a set of shades, then slid one hand into a pocket and went walking down the street turning his thoughts over the matter of how to go about this directive with an appropriate style and flair suitable to his instructions.

Stopping by a magazine stand, one which happened to have biographies of the recent warriors of this world, gave him the seeds of an idea.

OoOoO

Jared was nose-deep in a softcover tome and showed no signs of coming up for air anytime soon. Akane, noting his fascination with something, came in close enough herself to discover what it was.

"Skysaber, The Role Playing Game." She read, puzzled and bemused.

The redhead nodded without looking up from his reading.

Akane seemed to feel bolstered by this, sliding down to sit next to him. "Who'd have thought, huh? I mean, here you are interested in your own fan material!"

He looked up with the grin of feeding on ambrosia. "Actually, I'm not interested in the game for that. What *really* bugs me is that everybody I've met so far knows more about me and what I can do than I do myself. So I'm brushing up. The game company hasn't published any of the sourcebooks yet, but the basic rules are *alot* of help." He gave her a wry grin. "And the amusing part of this is that, due to being their lead star, I get to have an extremely high ability cap."

"I've never played any of those. You'll have to tell me what that means." Akane asked politely, wearing one of her trademark Ranma Charming grins.

Jared got a little edgy at that. Akane's cute grins, while very cute, *did* tend to herald disaster, at least for certain pigtailed martial artists, and he was uncertain how far the blast radius extended on things like that. Well, he was a noncombatant anyway, so it shouldn't matter. He spread open his book and flopped on his belly. "Okay, this is one of those games that's not all that hot on detail. I don't much like their system, but I understand the basic rules. It's not unlike the Sailor Moon role playing game."

"But Sailor Moon and the Scouts are real people." Akane objected.

He looked at her.

"What?" The youngest Tendo asked.

Jared struggled a bit and looked oddly introspective. "This is so weird. Okay, role-playing in general. It is a game style where all the action takes place in your own imagination. You use people that don't exist as a way of interacting with whatever scenarios the person running the world can come up with. Those can be as simple or as complex as he can think to conjure up. But since nothing involved actually exists, there have to be ways of deciding fairly whether this thing or that is even possible, especially since you may well be playing characters whose powers are far beyond the normal. Okay so far?"

Akane nodded, totally clueless but being agreeable because it was what the girls at school said to do in this kind of situation. "That makes sense, I guess. So what does this have to do with what you are so excited about?"

Jared turned back to his book. "All game systems use rules to describe what is possible and what is not. The ones based on a series *also* tend to give you the main characters' stats as described by those rules so you can understand what the values really mean."

He flipped open to the page with a full color illustration of his anime self. "You see? A list of powers and abilities." He tapped the page in triumph. "Now I can figure out what I am known to do, or at least gain an idea of the direction *they* think my stats should be derived. For example, see here? I've been listed as having a healing touch. This is good, as I did not know that."

Akane blinked at that. "Well, sure. I mean you use that all the time." She replied, at first confused, then brightening, confident that she'd gotten the concept at last. "Oh! I see what you mean. You haven't seen that part of the series yet, have you?"

He nodded. "Got it, and given how uncomfortable they are to watch I may never have the knowledge you guys do. Role playing games, on the other agile digit, attempt to lay down facts like how strong and fast I'm supposed to be without the in between material that's causing me so much shame and embarrassment watching the series."

The short haired Tendo double blinked. "But I don't think you have anything to be embarrassed about. I think the series makes you look Really Awesome! Hey!" She smiled, rising up from the floor. "C'mon, we can go watch some together! There's this *really* cool episode where you infiltrate some Galactic Police agency and get sent along with their top agents to..."

Jared found himself being dragged along to the living room.

OoOoO

The three faeries munched popcorn from little buckets while watching the boy who'd gotten their wish subjected to a good thirty minutes of his show, trying not to feel dreadfully embarrassed at first while the opening credits showed him showering as part of the running blend of scenes leading up to that day's part of the whole story.

He did, in fact, sing in the bath.

Once the actual story part of the tape had started he didn't feel so bad, as it was an action adventure episode and the scantily clad girls hanging about didn't seem to be immediately set on doing more than flirting. Which was good.

The faeries giggled together, twittering in amusement as Akane delighted in bringing the boy's attention to this or that heroic action.

"He really *doesn't* have a clue, does he?" Fauna sighed contentedly. "Mortals are such delightfully contrary creatures. I could watch them do things like this for ages."

"He doesn't seem *much* more hopeless than the average mortal." Flora tried to put a reasonable spin on it. "They do confuse me so. How ever do they propagate their own species? It certainly isn't because of their great ability to perceive a potential partner's willingness."

"Well, *this* is interesting!" Merryweather chirped out from where she'd been doing a liberal amount of mind reading.

The two other faeries floated over. "Oh? Do tell."

"Yes, what have you found?"

Merryweather used blue sparkles to highlight parts of the mortals minds that made it obvious, to anyone with any experience, what the humans were feeling. She started with Akane. "This girl is obviously in love with him from what she's seen him do in his TV show and manga books." The blue fairy observed.

The other two nodded, a trifle bored at anything so ridiculously obvious being pointed out.

Merryweather switched her attention over to Jared. "But look at this. *He's* seen the TV show *she* appears in as well, and he dislikes her intensely for what he's seen her do in *that* series!"

"Dislikes her?" Fauna flittered back in deliberation, glancing over at the mortals in concern. "But why is he being so nice to her?"

Flora's eyes were now quite wide. While the pink fairy considered her secret thoughts, Merryweather went over and answered Fauna's question by probing further and highlighting parts of the data revealed.

"You can see right here. He doesn't think it's honorable to mistreat her. At least not based on a passel of things she hasn't even done yet, and so his guard is up and he's not willing to trust her, but he's treating her with basic kindness til he has a better reason not to."

"I guess that *is* something a hero would do, isn't it?" Fauna admitted.

Flora practically exploded with glee. "We have GOT to see this one though! It has to have been more than a millennium since we've had a love/hate relationship on *top* of so many mortals..."

All three faeries stilled like wild animals sensing a greater predator nearby. After a brief moment the feeling passed and the whole trio voiced one word.

"Oberon."

Fauna looked in desperate fright to the other two.

"One of his servants, dear." Flora attempted to soothe. "That unpleasant prince, Shuras."

"Too much like an Unseelie for *my* tastes." Merryweather, apt to disapprove of secretive Fae in general and dark elves in particular, added.

There was a little known fact that the Faerie realms had a natural order all their own, and just like in ordinary nature, the smaller animals had an almost precognitive sense about when the *big* predators were lurking. They couldn't always hide, but the forest did tend to get unnaturally still when something large was about.

Being naturally small yet quite old meant these three were unnaturally good at hiding. It was an inescapable skill, you couldn't get there without it. Though size in this case was more a convenient way of referring to power. Titania could easily be as tiny as they, but counted as one of the largest Fae about. Only Oberon was nearly her equal. Well, that and some unexplained things that acted without reason or purpose all that much, so were generally avoided or ignored.

Flora was all for getting huffy. "Well, isn't that like him. *WE* spend several thousand years off in the hinterlands and the moment something *interesting* comes up..."

"He's not here for that." Fauna whispered, brushing off a terrified Merryweather, who had become fairly clingy. The green fairy had been checking up on their gossip ring, probably the lowest use ever for such a staggering amount of magic, but the priorities of the Fae were like that. In a few minutes she had the whole story and relayed it to her friends. To sum it up, Oberon was feeling a little randy and decided that dimensional hopping was a great new thing to collect concubines. So he'd sent out highly-powered servants to do all of the work for him.

"You mean he's going to mess up everything we've done here," ~no matter how unintentionally~ "just for another in that endless string of trysts of his?" Flora was not amused. "I protest!"

The three faeries nodded, then huddled.

"How do we best go about it?"

"...can't oppose him directly..."

"We *do* have that hero handy."

The three faeries separated and performed a unified nod, then rushed over to the comic books.

"Now how are we going to go about doing this?"

OoOoO

Sailor Pluto had finally figured part of this out. She'd summoned this abnormally quick-witted girl here to help her take care of a few things. But before they'd gotten that far the girl had managed to get herself bonded to the blank template Pluto had created to temporarily put a stop to certain disastrous changes. The reason they'd called Fiona in the first place was to guide the construct until Sailor Pluto could eliminate the tangle.

Then she'd accidentally blended her assistant into her creation.

It turns out that the average of a keen mind and a blank one wasn't high on the maturity scale.

Well, the 'construct of Fate' created was clearly no longer simply disposable, not bonded with the girl's essence like that. There would be a chance she could separate them later, but that would have to be done *after* the present problems were dealt with.

Susan really *did* need that gap in reality patched before it grew any larger. It was just that now the quick wits of the girl were part of the patch she'd been planning on using, and she didn't have another of either patch or girl.

Sailor Pluto tweaked a few lines of destiny. It looked as if the girl would have to be employed as she was. Some swift damage control to restore a little of her original personality, then into the flow with her.

Possibly the easiest thing about this all was that since she was to be plugging a blank hole in Fate, the entire universe would react to Fiona as if she'd always been there. The greatest conflict here would be that the girl was now the living embodiment of a fate Pluto didn't want to happen, rather than an advisor who could limit its impact.

Once the hybrid girl had accepted that destiny it would be difficult to restrict her, but Sailor Pluto didn't see any *other* options floating around handily.

Starting over wasn't an option. Corrupting the heroine sent her was Pluto's fault. She wouldn't get another, and couldn't use any from her own universe as they had destinies there already.

She wasn't about to use the boy.

Fiona would require a close protector during this, the poor girl being a veritable golem of dimensional energies at this point, but would have a part of her personality restored and perhaps enough of those wits would remain she would hopefully get the job done right.

Trying was Sailor Pluto's only option.

Susan settled into the long task. Once she was done she could plug the girl into that empty slot in their history as she'd first intended, hopefully without confusing the girl too badly. There would be conflicts, but with her wits the girl could manage them without strain to this reality.

Nabiki trotted downstairs, comic still in hand, and found Jared taking a short nap on the porch. She nudged him.

Jared woke up, rubbing his face. "Oy, it was a recurring dream where I missed a whole year of math class."

"You did. That was first season." Nabiki replied, smirk in place.

He recovered and thought about it. "Oh, you're right. I did. Pity, I even liked that teacher." The redhead sat up more fully. "So what's up?"

She pressed the magazine into his view. "What's this?"

Jared studied it for only a brief moment. "Looks to me like Ranma 1/2 manga, the series you guys were in, why?"

"And this?" Another was pressed into his view.

"Sailor Moon. Say, where did you get this?"

"They were dropped in my room, care to explain that?" Nabiki's hands found their ways to her hips.

"It would appear that my fantastical, cosmic powers have done it specifically to reward you for being so kind to me." He replied sarcastically.

Nabiki's lips fought her smirk from turning into a smile, then she lost it and broke up laughing. As she wiped a tear away she replied. "Okay, so that was a little ridiculous to ask. Sure, it *had* to be you, no one else could have done it. All I wanted to know was *why* you did it." She thumbed through the Sailor Moon manga. "Because it's not every day that you learn the secret identities of your local superheroines."

He hadn't intended that jibe as anything other than an obvious and witty way of saying 'I didn't do it.' But apparently that required something along the lines of not having done it being a something you could take for granted, and what SHE took for granted went the other way.

Still, there was a problem here to be solved.

Jared sat up. "I *do* hope you realize that the information you've gained could very easily cause the deaths of all those Sailors, and their friends, and by extension your family, you, and your entire world?"

Nabiki rolled her eyes. "Get real, Skysaber. They've already *dealt* with the threat they stood against. Maybe now they need a little publicity to come out of hiding."

"Which threat?" He asked her sternly, with a very level gaze. "Do you mean Queen Beryl, the Doom Tree Series, or perhaps you mean the Dark Moon family, or Nephrinia? Or maybe that lady in one of the later series who was going to engulf the universe in the total silence of death?"

Nabiki had grown VERY still.

He cocked his head and shook it sadly at her. "What, you forget that some of these anime are ongoing? I hope for your sake that you haven't called anyone as yet, because if you *sell* that information then it goes public, which means their enemies can get it, which means those cute little girls can be destroyed one by one, in ambush, and then all you helpless little victims have nothing to stand between you and a world -destroying power that can take someone of Ranma's level and easily transform him into a pathetic wimp via energy drain. If they didn't just squish him like a bug without batting an eyelash. Those kind of threats don't take resistance from mere humans with much grace."

Nabiki had gone bone white.

He slid the Sailor Moon manga out from Nabiki's nerveless grasp and slid it into his Standard Light Urban Survival Pack, in one of the more secure areas. With that completed, he leaned back. "Okay, how many people did you tell?"

Nabiki shook herself out of her trance, venturing a wane smile. "No one as yet. I got curious and wanted to know why you'd showed *me*. I figured there had to be a reason and so I came to ask."

Jared examined her features for falsehood, then gave it up. If Nabiki was lying he was not the sort of person who could pick it up. He swept up his book. "Not everything is so we can pad our pockets, Nabiki."

She was relaxing again, so he *hoped* that meant the Sailor Scouts' secret was still, as yet, unrevealed. Time would tell. Actually, if she wasn't paranoid at this point then *she* at least felt the secret was safe. He relaxed.

Nabiki leaned in to read the cover of the book he was perusing, brushing a stray lock of hair out of her face. "So why are you studying a game based on you?" She asked.

He shrugged. "It's all information. THIS, for example, is very useful."

Nabiki produced a rice cracker and munched as she read over his shoulder. "I see. Well, they've got the contents of your Superspy Survival Kit, but what does this 'Item of Power, level 4' mean anyway?"

He grinned, turning back pages. "Anything you don't know, you look up. Back here under Character Creation it lists Items of Power. You see?"

Nabiki picked up the book and read. "An Item of Power is any object that either directly enhances the player or serves as a tool or weapon... Hmm..." Her cheeks moved, reducing rice cracker, until she found the end. "Aha! For example, the bag of tricks Skysaber calls his Superspy Survival Kit is composed of at least sixty different items, many of which are individually named, from a watch and laser pistol to parasols and bubble gum. And while each of these alone has only limited power, he seems to be able to produce any object or tool fitted to his need. This combines to provide a great advantage to the character."

She lowered the book. "I don't get it."

Jared sighed tolerantly. "This is why the game provides examples, so you can get a sense of how the scales of power are related. In a similar system I once read, Sailor Moon carries a disguise pen that lets her pass herself off as just about anything and be believed. That's a level one item. Someone blew up a universe-eating monster and reincarnated several million people with one that was level six. Frankly, I think mine would be lower except they say that it can produce practically limitless amounts of cash."

Bits of cracker went flying and Nabiki stared at the rulebook, then back at the pouch Jared wore at his side.

The redhead reclaimed his book, not even noticing, hugging it to his chest and giggling, kicking his feet. Then he relaxed and said. "So you can see why I'm excited to read this. I finally get to learn the rules! ANYONE who knows the rules will be a better player!"

He spent a little while giggling in joy, then popped up to his feet. "I can't *wait* to try out some of the things they list here that I can supposedly do. Even though it *says* that I'm not very accurate doing transformations I think I could get it right with time."

Jared noticed Nabiki was choking and gave her the Heimlich.

"You okay?" The redheaded male put a hand on her shoulder after the cracker had been dislodged.

Nabiki nodded furiously, excusing herself.

He was just considering offering to try out if he did, in fact, have healing powers when he heard the doorbell and almost simultaneously fell under the awesome power of a mega super glomp.

"Nihau! Skysaber to buy Shampoo lots of new dresses for to impress Ranma, yes?"

A hand emerged from the hole in the floor underneath the Amazon. "Anything, just... air!" The hand found something soft blocking his way out. "Ack!"

"Dinner's ready!" Kasumi's voice came from inside.

OoOoO

Sailor Pluto made her corrections as best she could and dropped the young girl into the timestream at an appropriate moment, triggering her to come to wakefulness at landing. She was to be dropped at the Cherry Hill Shrine, where she could be cared for and any defects in her redesign compensated for, and could remain close to the Scouts.

For some odd reason she felt the urge to cross her fingers. But, being the Scout of Time, felt above the action.

It was below her dignity.

OoOoO

Fiona barely avoided dancing on the lawn of the Cherry Hill shrine as she saw it all come into phase around her. She was here!

And she was a PRINCESS!

Quivering with the force of her suppressed excitement, Fiona struck what she felt was a princess-like pose and attempted to waft across the lawn. She was charm. She was beauty. She was...

"ACK!"

Tripping upon the ends of her own hair, the girl went down flailing her arms, tumbling all the way down the shrine steps.

...grace?

OoOoO

Pluto's face fell into her hands.

OoOoO

Jared was in a private hell.

Considering how crowded the country was that was pretty hard to do.

This was Japan, he supposed he should have connected that with Japanese cooking. He'd had plenty of warning when they'd bought squid at the market. Still, he hadn't the least bit of doubt that Kasumi was one of the best cooks in the world, without peer considering the conditions she operated in.

And he couldn't eat the food.

Not for lack of trying. He wasn't a finicky eater by choice, but a monochromatic diet when he was growing up had left its mark, and all the willpower or good intentions in the world wouldn't stop him from gagging at certain foods.

Which happened to be just about everything the Japanese traditionally ate.

Seafood of any kind was something he had a problem with. With vegetables he required a long acclimation to decide, case by case, they were okay. Anything that was live, most things if raw... Even the flavored sauces they put on rice were... *shudder!* So he let his undefended bowl get emptied by Genma and excused himself from the table.

Food thieves could be useful sometimes.

Skysaber wandered out into the yard, sighing. Part of that monochrome diet had conditioned him against hunger. One or two days without food wasn't anything serious to him, it would only slow him down. Heck, he hardly *noticed* them! He didn't *get* hungry, only tired. And as he wasn't the guy with all the fiancees around here that probably meant there wouldn't be a need for him to move fast anytime soon anyway.

Which would give him some time to find an alternate source of food.

Suddenly a smell reached out and grabbed his nostrils, yanking his head in the direction of the outside wall around the compound. Without thought his legs began to follow it, leading him around a corner where a table stood ready, with Sasuke beside it, standing in his regular ninja attire with a cloth over one arm and imitating a waiter.

Kodachi sat at the table wearing an elaborate gown.

"Behold, my fine prince! A feast fit for your distinguished pallet!" She swept the cover off and revealed what his nose had already confirmed. Hamburgers, onion rings, and a tall milkshake topped off with cream.

Jared's body tried to move forward on its own but his mind kept his feet pinned to the ground as he asked politely. "Will you be joining me, then?"

Kodachi blinked and looked demurely to the side, closing her eyes. "Sasuke?"

She spoke one word and the little ninja swept away the entire feast, replacing it with a fresh set of plates, new tableware, and a different serving platter full of similar food.

Probably not drugged this time, either.

Just in case, Jared had slipped his hand into the Standard Light Urban Survival Pack, mentally summoning a poison detector he'd read about just a few minutes ago. What he found was a ring, and he slipped than on a finger, hoping he knew how to use it. But when he removed the hand wearing the ring Kodachi winced visibly.

"You will find no poison in this food, kind sir." She spoke softly.

The redhead wanted to sigh, but did not. It would be bad form. Thinking quickly, he removed the ring quite obviously and put it back in his pouch, sitting down. "I have to thank you for thinking of me, Miss Kuno. How did you know?"

He served her up one burger and himself took the other, waiting politely for her to bite, which she did. She chewed delicately and swallowed. "You are always saying 'this will be good training for if I am ever faced with squid.' And there are two schools of thought on that. One, is that you are dying to try squid, and this is your humorous way of anticipating it. And the one I correctly divined was that you do not like those things being served to you at the times you say that, so obviously you cannot be anticipating squid with any degree of pleasure. Holding it up as an example of those things you most hate."

Jared swallowed, pausing with the tremendously delicious burger in one hand and ready to gleefully spoon milkshake with the other. He nodded with some respect. "I thank you. That was quite perceptive of you."

Food was fuel, but the intaking of that fuel could be quite pleasurable. Pleasure was something he'd never much minded. He might not ever get hungry, but he avoided getting anorexic and dying by training until he *liked* eating.

It made him forget to do it less.

Well, sometimes. Other times he would get busy and go for days without a meal and only discover this when he was nearly fainting. So he tried to be good about enjoying eating and letting himself be enthusiastic about meals so he wouldn't forget them quite as often.

It was no fun, staring at your hand wondering why it was shaking, only to recall that you had no memory of consuming food that week.

Kodachi and he ate a mostly quiet meal together. He without much to say and she thinking deep thoughts. At the conclusion, thanking her for the meal, he went to go back inside the Tendo compound...

...only to run into Kasumi in the front door, looking crushed.

It almost took him a minute to figure it out. When he did he felt terrible. Suddenly ashamed, the redhead bowed. "Kasumi... I... I apologize. I cannot think of what to say. You cooked what *had* to be a wonderful meal, and I went and did something stupid and offensive without even thinking about the effort you went through. I am sorry."

On impulse he dropped to one knee before her, head toward the ground. "For my behavior I apologize."

Kasumi made no answer for a second, then he could hear her take a deep breath. "That's okay, Jared. You could have told me, though."

He raised a smile to her. "If I had two brain cells to rub together I surely would have. But my mind, I'm afraid, was on other things. In my preoccupation I did not make the connection and so led to this. I am sorry. May I help with the dishes?"

Her eyes closed in a happy smile. "If you wouldn't mind, but I'll need a minute to clear them. You could come in to help me wash in a few minutes."

He nodded, rising to his feet. Kasumi turned and went back into the house while Jared again wandered around inside the yard.

Inside the kitchen, Kasumi took the master shopping list and wrote "NO SQUID!" over the top and double underlined it, then slid it back into the drawer where she kept it.

OoOoO

"Ouch!"

"Are you alright?"

Fiona opened her eyes to find herself sitting before a girl with long black hair dressed in the robes of a Shinto Priestess.

"Rae?" She whispered in shock, rubbing her head. Falling down the shrine steps seemed to have shaken something loose.

The shrine maiden frowned, then smiled. "Why yes, that's my name. Do I know you?"

"Hey Fiona!"

The girl jumped as she heard her name and turned around to see a young man running towards her. He was tall, older than her sixteen odd years, and had dark brown hair that fell over his eyes.

"You know her, Chad?" Rae asked.

"Of course!" Chad grinned. "You ought to remember me, right Fiona?" He asked, helping her to her feet, then staring her up and down and grinning. "Wow! You look really good dressed like that. I almost thought you were one of Rae's friends! What are you doing in Japan anyway?" He asked curiously. "I thought you and Karl were going to Europe this year. Did Karl argue with you again?"

Chad frowned then, his stance becoming slightly dangerous, "My God! He did, didn't he?" He snarled, "Just say the word, Fiona and I'll..."

It was at this point that Fiona decided to take the classical way out of a situation she did not understand and that, if she tried to fumble through, might end up making a far more dangerous mess out of. It was better to take the cowardly way out and wait till she knew more about everything. She allowed herself to waver slightly on her feet and pretended to collapse.

Chad jumped to catch her before she was even halfway down. "Fiona?"

"Oh shut up, Chad! It's obvious that she's come a long way, and she's tired." Rae snapped, "Come on, she can use my room to recuperate."

"No, my room is closer." Chad protested. "We can take her there."

"As if I'd let a pervert like YOU take an innocent young girl to your room!" Rae stung in reply. "It'd be like letting Grandpa into a girl's gym locker!"

"THAT'S DISGUSTING RAE!" Chad shouted back at her, for the first time since his arrival, disrespectful to the young priestess. "She's my YOUNGER SISTER!"

~Um. Well, that's *one* question answered.~ Fiona thought.

OoOoO

Outside, Jared had begun searching for that poison sensor again, wondering what else he had in there that he didn't quite know how to use. With that in mind he went about searching through the Standard Light Urban Survival Pack's unplunged depths. It took him no time at all to conclude that it was more than a little bit special in and of itself. For one thing, there was the fact that touching a certain tab caused the whole pouch to change appearance, suitable to just about any disguise. More than that was the minor detail that the pouch held more than it possibly could.

There were items in there he rarely carried just out of space concerns. There were also a number of devices he couldn't readily identify. Two of the most curious he mentally marked for further inspection. One was an elaborate ornament. It looked like a jeweled headband but the one true watch reported it as a synaptic teacher. Which, if it did anything like he thought it would, opened up *vast* possibilities.

The other was a perfectly ordinary seeming cellphone.

Considering the special powers of the nerd toy he found it highly curious that he would carry such a thing, but the in-watch catalog of items only revealed name, not function. The cellphone's name was Cell Slicer, which could mean any number of things, and it might even do most of them. He'd have to investigate later, but right now it was important to get a good overview before delving too far into specifics.

And part of that overview was the mystery of why his dream powers had mostly failed. They should have either worked completely, like if this really was a dream, or not worked at all, proving that this was reality.

One way or the other it was academic. He was here. He was bound by the rules of the scenario until that scenario was over.

But the puzzle intrigued him.

He trotted inside to help with the dishes.

OoOoO

Kodachi wandered by the way and climbed into her family's limo, so un-often used that they'd had to hire a driver and a trio of mechanics to get it moving and out of mothballs for this occasion.

And yet somehow it had seemed appropriate.

~What a stunning concept! He'd actually been willing to eat with me, provided the meal was not drugged. I wonder why I'd not come to that conclusion before?~

Kodachi began to wonder if she could even enjoy the challenge of not cheating at her gymnastics matches. Though if she did how would she then break the change in policy to her team?

Sitting on the girl's head, Fauna was generating an almost imperceptible cloud of sparkles as she altered thought processes, rewired nerves, and eliminated baggage the girl would not need, such as her preoccupation with black flowers.

Flora popped out of nothing, addressing her sister. "What are you doing here? We've almost gotten our surprise ready. Then we find you're not there with us to join in the fun."

"I saw this noblewoman hanging around the house, and couldn't help myself." Fauna replied, still messing with Kodachi's thoughts. "What kind of hero do *you* know that doesn't fight for some higher cause? I just wanted one ready in case that peasant family he's staying with proves to be trouble."

"True..." Flora agreed, then saw an errant thought pass by in the girl's mind that she couldn't help but correct, and soon she was delving in, making her own changes.

"Hey you two!" Merryweather popped out of the air. "I was about to let it go and get the whole thing started, but I can't handle the whole thing alone!"

"Maybe you should see this." Fauna pointed out, still deeply involved in making alterations. Suddenly Kodachi discovered that she held a deep and abiding love for music. Odd that she'd never known this before...

The third fairy floated over. "Hey, what are you doing? Is that a princess?"

All three fae looked up at each other for a brief moment.

"Not yet." Flora and Fauna chorused, liberally mucking about with the girl's mind.

Merryweather floated over to join them. "When are we going to finish the other?"

"In a moment, dear. First we'd like to complete a little meddling here."

Looking in his rear view mirror, the new driver of the Kuno family limo noted a tiny halo of pink, blue and green sparkles around the crown of Kodachi's head, but the look of serene nobility she held was enough for him to hold his peace. So far this was turning out to be a better job than he'd expected. If the young lady wanted to glow from having a meet with her boyfriend... Well, that was okay.

He wondered if he could get that guy's autograph, though. The Real Skysaber? Nah, had to be a trick. A good actor, though. He wondered who was behind the hoax.

OoOoO

"You know... that was *refreshing!*" Flora twirled.

Fauna adjusted her hair, and nodded eagerly. "I must say, it was! A do-it-yourself princess kit! You know, I've never made my own before. The whole concept just seems *invigorating!*"

"There had to be SOME way to address the shortage." Flora said primly. "And now that the *other* thing is underway..."

The two paused and noted the absence of Merryweather.

They floated over to discover her busy doing things to the timestream. "What are you doing, Merryweather?"

The blue faerie concluded her busy little manipulations and eased off a near frenzy of manipulative fidgeting. She shook herself lightly and rainbowed a little cloud of dust - predominantly blue, of course. "Oh? Me? Well, I checked out this princess of ours but she lives in this weird old house..."

"A prisoner?" The other two chorused, pleasantly surprised.

"If so, they didn't have a decent tower, and she *certainly* didn't wash dishes or sweep floors." The blue faerie disapproved.

"Oh dear." Fauna put a hand to her cheek. "What an awful arrangement!"

"No wicked stepmothers?" Flora tried to find a good edge to it.

"No. And no dragons, curses, old trolls, witches, ghosts... or... or ANYTHING!"

"Oh dear." Both faeries disapproved.

"So anyway," Merryweather waved her wand carefully and formed a little chalk board, only she got one of the angles not quite right and ended up getting her wand stuck in it. She pulled and pulled, her wand not quite coming free and bending the whole frame like weak rubber, finally the other two helped her tug and she got it pulled free, though they landed in a little heap and an untidy pile.

They quickly sorted themselves out.

Straightening her skirt properly first, the third faerie floated primly over to her chalkboard, the other two drifting to seats on a thimble and a roll of thread (they were all presently hiding in Kasumi's sewing basket).

Merryweather waved her wand and the chalkboard acquired a chalk scene of the Kuno estate. "You see? Just a weird sort of house with crazy angles. Not even a spouse-killing man with a blue beard would live in such a place."

She got a round of agreement. Murderers with crazy secrets and blue beards were far more ordinary than this sort of ramshackle hut. Who would ever build such a thing? (Faeries were frequently very western in building tastes, if they could be likened to any human culture at all.)

"Well, I couldn't do anything about it *directly*, so I had a wicked old lady who was in the area get a compulsion to go over there and whisper three nights to the head of the household that he was doomed to become a swine if he didn't get the crimson scales from the breast of a fire breathing dragon who lives in the north and wash them three times with the oil drawn from the single flower that grows on the banks of a river of strange powers banked in a valley of mist, then link them into a belt which he was to wear in battle against a great hill ogre and bring back its head to sprinkle its blood on his step."

Her audience nodded. It seemed perfectly straightforward.

The chalkboard was now cumbered with full-color representations of dragons, ogres and misty valleys, crowding out the original chalk rendition of the Kuno house. Merryweather clicked her wand shorter. "I got a promise from the local land spirits they'd redo the house if he did that." She waved the wand and got a full image of a willowy and many towered western castle with blue roofs.

Flora indicated the chalkboard. "But are you sure all those things are there? What if... I mean there aren't many *other* magical things about. What if we don't have a convenient hill ogre or something?"

"I already thought of that!" The third faerie said gleefully. "There's this place named Jusenkyo. All it took was a *little* reprogramming with the basic spells (the poor thing had been abandoned so long), and I've got it pumping out monsters galore! I already went up there and kicked the Guide into the right spring. We've already got our Dragon! Then I ran into this *beautiful* boy who was practically an ogre already and nailed him to a hill nearby so he can't wander around so much! It's a *perfect* plan!"

"Wonderful, dear!" The other two chorused, clapping their hands.

OoOoO

The Guide puffed and sent out a cloud of steam. Fire was no problem, but hot water got too hot! It turned back to steam before it could touch his flesh!

OoOoO

Ryoga turned about. Wasn't this hill familiar somehow? He was sure he'd went this way three times today. Oh well, that looked like a nice cave he could camp out in...

OoOoO

Nodoka wandered the streets of Nerima, her steps turning her once more back to that respectable house on the hill.

Now why did she have this recurring compulsion to tell the owner that he was a pig?

OoOoO

Jared sat meditatively out in the yard while Kasumi remained inside attempting to contain the catastrophe of Ranma, the Tendos and Amazons in the same house by preparing to serve desert.

Ignoring the ruckus indoors and bringing himself firmly into focus, Jared activated the flight power he had always enjoyed in his dreams, throwing all of his considerable dream might into it. There was a moment of extreme resistance, then he floated obediently up off the ground, as if chains had suddenly released him. It was now as easy as he'd always remembered it being, as natural as breathing.

Of course, that initial resistance had blacked him out from immense pain. When he came to he began unclenching his mental muscles and opening his eyes. He was floating cross-legged over the lawn, and Cologne there was looking right at him.

"Interesting. I find it most unusual that a cartoon character would have such a power. Especially a technological hero. Where did you learn your spells, boy?"

Jared cocked an eyebrow, explanations forming. "Ahhh. I understand. You see, I have no explanation of how I got here. I'd been thinking it was a dream, but if it *was* a dream I should have power to do or change anything in it. And I haven't been able to do that. Even trying hurts like few things except a breakup. So my main question was why my ability to change my dreams had worked here at all. Maybe magic *would* be a plausible reason. It does work here, after all."

Cologne pointed her staff at his floating. "You did *that* merely by wishing to? You must have great aptitude, boy. My tribe has numbered one or two powerful sorceresses, and neither of them could fly as casually as you do now."

The redhead landed. It was an act, really. Jared could feel the flight power still active within him, but he could pretend to be affected by gravity. The flight power would lapse when his attention did, but he could tell that it would not be nearly so painful nor difficult to restart it again.

"A good point great-grandmother..." He shoved his fist in his mouth. Eyes wide he bowed in apology. "Sorry, I presume too much. I'm just used to hearing Shampoo call you that. I know your given name, but that hardly seems more appropriate. Forgive me. Could we retain this magic stuff as a secret between us? And, perhaps, could you teach me more of it?"

She chuckled. "No, I'm afraid my spells would be of little use to you. If you can fly through an act of will then you'd be better off discovering your powers on your own. Though I do think we can keep your secret."

Jared blinked, rising again by reflex. "We?"

Cologne twirled her staff, using the end to poke Sasuke out from hiding. "I'd spend some time developing warding spells or danger senses. Because this little ninja here could have caused you alot of trouble."

"Well, err, ah..." Sasuke said. Cologne rapped him to the noggin, then whipped off the ninja's mask to give him a quick shampoo and rinse.

"He'll not bother you now, but think about what I said, sonny-boy. And you owe me one."

"Of course." Sasuke shampooed concerning him? Talk about blinding the Kunos! They relied on the little ninja for all sorts of spying. He owed Cologne a big one for making that threat go away.

Cologne hopped back inside.

Jared landed just as the focus of dessert finally lost some appeal and the household erupted onto the porch from the force of Akane disagreeing with someone. Jared landed awkwardly, slipped and waved his arms wildly before he fell into the koi pond.

Several guests and household members were laughing as the 'international superspy adventurer' pulled his sopping self out of the pond.

"Hey," Jared entered a confident stance. "I make no claim to be perfect..."

"...I only claim to try." They all chorused, finishing his phrase for him.

His head dropped into his palms. "Oh, why do I even bother to open my mouth?"

"To put your foot in?" Nabiki teased, cocking her head at him smugly.

The redhead sat down, lifted his foot, and inserted it into his oral cavity. Taking it out again, he smacking his lips thoughtfully, then said. "No, I'd remember if I did that more often."

"That's not very becoming, Jared." Kasumi reproved the action.

"I'm not concerned right now with impressing people, Kasumi. It seems a hopeless cause." He replied, though inwardly adjusting his standard of behavior upwards slightly in response.

"You know, you really *are* good looking, Jared." Akane pressed, probing what she knew would be his response.

"That's because I take... Mascutone!" Jared posed as if on a game show or commercial and highlighting a bottle of product. What surprised him most was when said bottle materialized in his hands and he found he was holding an actual product called 'Mascutone.'

"See, he *does too* do it!" Akane turned and reproved Ranma, who'd thought that bit of the series was too ridiculous to be real.

Behind them, Jared popped a couple of pills from the bottle in curiosity. Then, seeing her acquisitive glance, tossed the rest to Nabiki, who hurried off to the phone.

OoOoO

The sorceress was displeased.

There was hardy anything here worth conquering!

Really, these peasants, servants the lot of them, they were without any kind of moral tendencies. There wasn't anything that *wasn't* for sale!

Which made everything cheap... even worthless.

Loyalty, honor, love... These weren't for sale. They'd never HAD them! Gone were the noble romances, towering strong in spite of great opposition and heartache, true to their loves and goals. Instead they were rutting like animals with anything that caught their eye, leaving when their attention wandered, and cheapening themselves to where they were so jaded they'd engage in acts an Unseelie would find disquieting in order to spark a flagging thrill.

That was not love.

One could not feed the fires of passion with manure. But apparently here they'd all forgotten that. Even Oberon was more choosy in his mates than this. And saying the King of Unseelie was cleaner in his sexual habits than *anyone* was paramount to saying that the rotting filth of the Bog of Eternal Stench smelled fresh and pleasant.

Honor, she had to laugh at the concept. Here she, a sorceress of an ancient and evil line, was pristine as new driven snow in contrast, and complaining about the wretchedness of those around her! To what depths would they NOT sink? Here, they'd inflicted lawyers, police and stiflingly huge codes and ill-bred regulations upon themselves because they could basically assume that no man, woman nor child would keep their word!

The Sorceress had been known to break hers, but she'd have been shocked to have *anyone* assume she'd never had any intention of keeping it!

These... these... were creatures! They were goblins! Their loyalty no longer than their attention spans! (which were small, to say the least.) With their bellies full they'd be placid enough to follow ANYONE! They'd murder each other or sell their children for this filthy paper money... If she were to summon Smedley here all he'd have to do is build a warren and he'd feel right at home.

Morgan's daughter scowled at an apartment building perched atop a subway tunnel. No, Smedley would *not* have to build a warren, they had them here already.

Frankly even goblins measured up well in that against these degenerates. Goblins would keep their minds to task because higher Unseelie had a tendency to kill them if their attentions wandered.

The sorceress was stunned. The list was endless. It went on and on. Suddenly she knew how some of the Knights of the Round must feel, fighting to uphold integrity and valor amidst those attempting to tear them down. This was this biggest challenge in a world!

Well, she was no Knight of the Round, she was a wicked sorceress. But she'd still need something done if she wanted anything worth her time to rule.

She set out to buy her kingdom, having chosen what she wanted.

OoOoO

They all sat around the Tendo dining room table wielding bowls of flavored ice.

"So, child." Cologne addressed Jared. "Have you got any family back at home?"

He shrugged. "A mom, some brothers, and a creature who'd like to call himself my dad. Nothing special."

Genma earned a dark look from his offspring. "Yah, I kinda know the feeling." Ranma groaned.

"Nah, Genma's an honest bastard. While he's a coward and a cheat and a boldfaced liar, utterly dishonorable and so stupid as to make a lump of coal look bright, also a thief and glutton who'd sell his own soul for a grain of rice, he has his redeeming qualities."

The household held still a moment.

"Such as?" Nabiki inquired.

"He might actually intend some good to come from his short-sighted schemes." Jared replied, smirking. Then he scowled. "Mine, on the other hand, is an almost textbook sociopath. He was an (expletive deleted) who actually got his kicks out of hurting others. It was his food, his drug, and his reason for being, and he was smooth enough that the first few times he'd always get away with it."

Mass blinking resulted.

"So you *do* actually say 'expletive deleted'." Kasumi said, surprised.

"Yah," Nabiki leaned on her elbow, smirking. "I always thought it was something they stuck in there for character, you know."

Akane was chuckling. "You know, it sounds more funny when he says it in person. That way you *know* they're not deleting anything to put the words in, that he *does* say expletive deleted, instead of a swear word."

Jared hung his head in his hands, muttering. "This place..."

OoOoO

Three faeries stood watching, the one in blue holding a stopwatch covering most of her lap, and the other two counting down the seconds on it.

"Five, four, three, two..." 


End file.
